I think the GPL has one thing servers it's purpose, that it forces heavy integrated parts must be open source. I feel bad for Blender users, because they will never have any fully-integrated commercial renderer plugin :/. If Blender would use any of them, we would start Corona for Blender right now. There are other, much better and really free licences, like MIT/Apache/. I am not saying the OSS concept is wrong.

Allowing it would make Blender less free. Forbidding good Corona renderer integration for Blender is freedom. being able to choose from the same free plugins, plus also commercial plugins: less freedom. being able to choose from free plugins: freedom FSF goes on and on about 'protecting users freedom'.

What makes me angry is the whole FREE software ideology/advertisement. If somebody wants to make a 3D studio legally usable only while not wearing underwear, he should be able to do it. That is fine, any software developer is entitled to the choice of licence. The sole reason for the split is the licencing issue. Basically, the plugin for the 3D application would have to be split into two, one OSS and other closed-source, and the two would have to communicate via sockets/files/pipes (which is slow). So, to make a commercial plugin for blender, one has to either do the 'exporter + standalone' combo, which I want to stay away from, because it is slow and clumsy, or do even more ridiculous workarounds, which will be as slow and clumsy as exporter version (This is what V-ray is doing). We thought there were some loopholes, but it turns out the 'Free' Software Foundation thought about them too and explicitly forbidden them. Making Corona opensource software (OSS) is out of question for me, I need to make it commercial to be able to fund its future development. We went over the software and decided to do Blender, since we thought it is 'free', 'open', etc., so it should be simple to integrate into.īecause 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').

The implementation will start right now, since there is a guy who will do it as a thesis assignment. Right now, I am deciding which application to implement Corona into next. There will not be any Corona for Blender for a long time. Tl dr: The 'Free' licence of Blender forbids me to make top-quality Corona plugin for it. Since now there is model which may work (community developed exporter + corona standalone), I updated the title - see the discussion in this thread for details

Ubuntu blender vray