We’re seeing more and more software ending up under GPL after it becomes abandoned or the original company goes out of business. I know how many lines of code I wrote in the 70’s for a company no longer with us, and if I imagine that multiplied by all the other hackers in the world, the total loss of human effort and creativity is simply staggering.
Times have changed. It appears people are now willing to buy the source for important packages rather than let them die. According to this week’s Debian News:
Blender is Free Software. After the company behind Blender, a very fast and versatile 3D modeller and renderer, went bankrupt, the Blender Foundation was created. The purpose was to secure and maintain the Blender source. 100,000 Euro were required to purchase the source from the company, and this was donated by many volunteers from around the world. To celebrate this, a conference will be held in October, closing with a party at which Blender 2.26 will be released as free software.
Although I am not a graphics person myself, I have it on the best of authority Blender is a magnificent piece of kit.
It *is* magnificent, even if the learning curve is a bit high.
Now why can’t the environmental movement take a cue from these guys and collect more donations to buy land they deem to be in danger?
Actually one did. The Nature Conservancy got companies to donate money so they could purchase specific tracts of land they felt partcularly needed protection. Probably the only Environmental group I ever gave money to.
But that was 15-20 years ago. They’ve probably been taken over by the nutcases by now like all the rest.
It’s sad really.
Hey, I supported the Nature Conservancy, too! Then they started buying in the Amazon; then swapping; then organizing gov’t land reserves … and I stopped following them.
I imagine that free software will be converging (in a few more years) on various applications. First, an OS (OK, first was Gnu Not Unix – GNU and C as programming languages). Looks like Linux will likely be free softward OS. Email ? Eurdora. Web Server? Apache (?) (not sure here).
Where is the MS Word clone (maybe named eM eS Word?) for free?
looking for some useful tools