Fork Blender

[DanielPaul]

I'm wondering why it is necessary to do a fork of blender.

Can someone explain why this is done?

If it is because of the GPL license, would it be possible for users to build their own blender?
Or is there already sensible code in the fork, that cant be distributed?

We would like to switch to octane in our blender pipeline,
but we are afraid to lose the freedom of using daily builds.

Thanks for your help
Daniel

[calus]

If it is because of the GPL license, would it be possible for users to build their own blender?
Or is there already sensible code in the fork, that cant be distributed?

This is because of the GPL license yes,
and as a result Otoy has a legal duty to publish the modified blender sources :
https://github.com/OTOY-NZ/OctaneBlender

Most relevant code modifications are about connecting Blender to OctaneServer which is the separate non GPL application containing the sensible code.

However the OctaneBlender sources there, are very outdated (not updated since 2 years ),
but maybe there is another up-to-date repository that I'm not aware of ...

[DanielPaul]

Thank you for this information.

So when a 2.8 version would be released, we could build blender every day if there is no error in the code?

Are there any plans for 2.8?

[J.C]

If you are license owner I think you can ask Otoy for Blender's code.

Blender 2.8 is still beta. The plans for integrating it are after it is officially released.

[calus]

So when a 2.8 version would be released, we could build blender every day if there is no error in the code?

In theory yes but in reality would need two doubtful conditions :

1/ An initial BlenderOctane release based on official Blender 2.8 (non beta) release .
this will take an unknown amount of time after blender 2.8 stable is released (expected early 2019).

2/ Otoy regularly publishing BlenderOctane source code,
and as I said this process seems to have stopped for some reason since February 2017:
https://github.com/OTOY-NZ/OctaneBlender/releases

[calus]

If you are license owner I think you can ask Otoy for Blender's code.

Hum interesting supposition,
would be good to have Drawfun's confirmation.

Also would be awkward to be limited to license owners, in view of the GPL rules ...

[J.C]

That's my guess. I could be wrong.

[J.C]

Regarding 3rd party addons:

...It does not mean the author must give you such code for free. It means when you have the code, you are free to distribute it (or modify) under the same license. You can distribute it however you like - for free or for money.

...But you can do something like commercial render engines do: the export plugin is GNU (uses Blender API) and converts scene data to commercial application (ie. renderer) which is not GNU (doesn't use Blender API) and the licenses differ. This works because the addon is not dependent on the non-GNU application.

[calus]

...But you can do something like commercial render engines do: the export plugin is GNU (uses Blender API) and converts scene data to commercial application (ie. renderer) which is not GNU (doesn't use Blender API) and the licenses differ. This works because the addon is not dependent on the non-GNU application.

Right this is indeed what Octane for Blender is doing,
the GPL part is Blender OctaneRender™ edition (Blender with OctaneRender RenderServer support integrated), so the modified blender source code should be accessible to anyone*,
while OctaneRender Server is the actual renderer with Otoy non GPL source code so obviously non-public.

* this was actually the case https://github.com/OTOY-NZ/OctaneBlender , the only problem is that this repository is no more updated since 2 years

[linograndiotoy]

If you are license owner I think you can ask Otoy for Blender's code.

Blender 2.8 is still beta. The plans for integrating it are after it is officially released.

Octane integration into Blender 2.8 will start before the official release, so we can have it ready and tested as Blender 2.8 will be officially released.