Ton Roosendaal, creator of the Blender 3D modeling system, assurance that Blender has been and always will be a free copyleft GPL project and available without restrictions for any use, including commercial use. Ton emphasized that all Blender and plug-in developers who use the internal API and are required to open the code of their developments under the GPL, develop a common cause and initially agree that using the work of others, they allow their contribution to be used under the same conditions.
The reason for reminding about the free nature of the project was many plugin developers by the advent of a new service , which allows you to select the Blender plugins you are interested in, and then download and install them all at once.
The problem is that despite the fact that all Blender plugins are required to publish their code under the GPL license, it has recently become a practice to sell plugins by their authors through a store catalog . Plugins are open source, but their authors are free to supply installation builds through a paid download service. The GPL does not prohibit such a sale, which allows authors to receive funds for the further development of their plugins.
Blender Depot is using the existing GPL code of the add-ons for free distribution, which undermines the established business model. For example, the RetopoFlow add-on is offered for download in for $86, but absolutely free to install via or manually downloading the code from . Moreover, if desired a paid service and sell assemblies bypassing the authors (for example, commercial Linux distributions are engaged in a similar sale of a product formed from GPL components).
From a legal point of view, this practice is completely legal, since the GPL allows you to distribute the product without restrictions. But the developers of paid add-ons to Blender are unhappy with the actions of Blender Depot and the ethics of creating services for the free distribution of GPL products, bypassing the paid delivery channels used by their authors, as well as the appropriateness of using the GPL in the project and the possibility of using a separate license for the API provided by the add-ons. According to some developers, it is the opportunity to receive rewards that has led to the creation of many useful additions to Blender, and the emergence of services like Blender Depot can lead to the destruction of the existing ecosystem.
Source: opennet.ru