Sintel

Good, now that I have a bit of your attention on the state of free software in Chile, let me tell you about a couple of cases that may bring a little understanding to the subject.

I want to talk about 2 projects that owe their existence to this powerful idea of free software, and through these examples I want to figure out the secret behind the success of a free software project, or one based on free software. My aim is to find the fundamentals that make these projects work. I’m convinced that a lot of people who talk about free software have no idea what they’re talking about, and so they create wrong expectations and ideas, which, badly applied, can be disastrous.

In this first post we’re going to focus on a project that uses free software, where the focus is not on developing code (although that did turn out to be necessary). Here the focus is on using the free software available to build a piece of art and share it, and of course to set up a sustainable industry that makes it possible to earn money from the project.

I’m talking about the short film Sintel, which I found out about thanks to this post on the excellent Bitácora Virtual by Andrés Moya.

Sintel is an Open Movie, which means all the production material is available under a Creative Commons license, so derivative works can be created from this film.

In the team’s own words:

“Sintel” is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film.

Blender is 3D modeling software created by Ton Roosendaal, a Dutch programmer and entrepreneur. In 1998 Roosendaal had founded a company called NaN to sell and distribute the software. By 2002 NaN was bankrupt.

Despite the bankruptcy, Roosendaal wanted to keep developing the software. The solution was to pay his creditors 100,000 euros for the Blender source code. To get there he created the Blender Foundation, whose first goal was to raise the money to free the code. Here we’re literally talking about freeing the source code ;).

The foundation is sustained by donations, whose main purpose is to employ Roosendaal as full-time lead developer. The foundation’s main goal is “to give the worldwide internet community access to 3D technology in general, with Blender as the core”.

The Blender Foundation has produced several independent projects before, including shorts and games. Blender itself has been used in commercial films, such as Spider-Man 2 and the recent Argentine film Plumíferos.

Here’s the film Sintel. I hope you enjoy it: