Coming back after the NaN bankruptcy, I'm glad to see that Blender is now free software, more or less. But the present situation is very confusing.

A clear first step is to have usable executables for download. Right now, there's blender.org and blender3d.org. Blender3d.org's download link refers you to elysiun.com, and elysiun.com says "Note you can't download Blender publisher anywhere, if you do it's considered to be an illegal act." But you can download Blender publisher from the blender.org source download area. Then you have to download the key, which references commercial licensing terms. The distribution has licensing restrictions. You don't get a "universal key". Installation requires agreeing to NaN's EULA, which has all kinds of wierd restrictions.

Is this really free software? Are there usable executables without keys and EULAs?

animats wrote:

Is this really free software? Are there usable executables without keys and EULAs?

I'm using one on my Debian GNU/Linux i686. It's a Debian package somebody made from the free source code that can be downloaded here.

There were also some binaries for Windows floating around, but I don't know more about them than people were working on them. And I don't know about other platforms at all. Search the forum...
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Felix

The way i see it is this:

The old publisher and creator programs contain some code which is still licensed to NaN and therfore is NOT open sourced

Work is underay to replace this code (mainly game blender related stuff i believe) with open sourced code but this may take some time...

The source code available to download here is open source and therefore and compliations of THIS code is open source but this will not including a working game blender at the moment for the reason outline above.

I hope this is right

If not i'm sure the flaming will begin soon