All code on the blendermarket is GPL. Yet, it sold over 25 million dollars worth of software. No DRM on the assets, all free software. Free as in freedom, not as in beer. In spite of that, I have not seen once anyone in the blender community complain about piracy, let alone have I seen anyone distribute any software or assets sold on the blendermarket unofficially. It just isn’t a problem, or at least not more of a problem than on any other DRMed closed source alternative.

Around 10 years ago the developer of a closed source renderer called Corona ranted about Blender’s GPL, as it prevented him from integrating his renderer into Blender without disclosing its source code:

Because entire Blender is covered by GPL licence, it is forbidden to link anything closed-source to it (not just commercial as in “you pay for it”, but anything closed-source, which includes “it is free to use, but I won’t give you my source code”) […]

We thought there were some loopholes, but it turns out the “Free” Software Foundation thought about them too and explicitly forbidden them. […]

So, Blender has unusable licence. That is fine, any software developer is entitled to the choice of licence. If somebody wants to make a 3D studio legally usable only while not wearing underwear, he should be able to do it. What makes me angry is the whole FREE software ideology/advertisement. FSF goes on and on about “protecting users freedom”. Their interpretation is:

• being able to choose from free plugins: freedom
• being able to choose from the same free plugins, plus also commercial plugins: less freedom.
• Forbidding good Corona renderer integration for Blender is freedom. Allowing it would make Blender less free. […]

I am not saying the OSS concept is wrong. There are other, much better and really free licences, like MIT/Apache/… If Blender would use any of them, we would start Corona for Blender right now. Too bad it uses the GPL bullshit. I feel bad for Blender users, because they will never have any fully-integrated commercial renderer plugin :/.

He feels bad for what? For users having a thriving software ecosystem with license that ensures it stays free and open forever? The Corona Dev wrote this 10 years ago, probably without realizing that blender was already on its way to become the most widely used 3D application. There are plenty of people making money developing comercial plugins for blender - and they are all GPL.

It makes me think about how much we all have been gaslit by the tech corporations that without DRM and that whole subscription-licenses nightmare they would run out of business. It is not true and we can point our fingers to the blender ecosystem to prove them wrong. I don’t know… I haven’t seen anyone point this out yet.