Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Buying the rights to proprietary programs to free them

[Fabio Pesari]

On 02/05/2016 04:22 PM, J.B. Nicholson wrote:
>
> I believe this has been done before. According to 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History Blender, the free 
> rendering/editing program, was originally developed at Neo Geo and used 
> internally, then later distributed as proprietary software by Not a Number 
> Technologies. In mid-July 2002 the "Free Blender" campaign collected money 
> to release the Blender source code under a free license with an option of 
> also a non-free license. This option was never used and it was suspended in 
> 2005. A free software Blender was released on August 20, 2003 as version 
> 2.26. Today Blender remains free software licensed to all under "GNU GPLv2 
> or any later".

Yes, I totally forgot about Blender! Or it subconsciously prompted me to
start this thread; in either case, Blender is arguably one of the best
free programs around (in several categories) and proof that this
approach can offer quality software pretty quickly.

A lot of people are unwilling to donate money to unfinished projects and
that's understandable, but in this case you get a 100% free program that
fully works in a couple of weeks.

It is also easier to obtain funding for something that's already fully
working, as opposed to something that is incomplete or has to be built
from scratch (and that's where a lot of crowdfunding fails to deliver).

For example, I mentioned Renoise before, and I think many professional
musicians would donate money to get it freed, because that would prevent
it from becoming obsolete in the future and/or vendor lock-in.