@Brecht
Yes, add-ons authors are credited in the preferences, but that is highly
different from the credits page as you have to specifically expand the
add-on to see the credit and it doesn't show the number of commits that
author has made.
Bundling does make a difference because it marks the add-ons as
officially endorsed by Blender, they are available to every blender user
and these add-ons are universally recognized and frequently mentioned in
tutorials. Furthermore, moving add-ons to an online repository would
negatively affect Blender users, invalidating many tutorials, and
decreasing the attainability of tools that users have relied upon for
years. Add-ons, plugins, mods, these are what make great enduring
applications and vibrant, thriving, user communities, and it is to
everyone's benefit to showcase and include them.
As to UI/UX design, add-ons use mostly Blender widgets, so their UIs are
almost 100% compatible with the rest of blender, and each add-on must be
reviewed before being included with Blender, and therefore, if their UX
was incompatible, they wouldn't be accepted.
All Blender devs, regardless of whether they are working on "core"
Blender or an add-on, are required to provide documentation for the
features they develop, and are generally expected to continue to develop
and help maintain the area of their choice. Since add-on developers put
in similar work and their add-ons are distributed with Blender and
provide part of its functionality, it seems natural that they should
receive the same marketing, and that denying them that will only hurt
Blender as a whole. Why wouldn't you want to advertise as many features
possible? Advertising add-ons will only make Blender more attractive,
and treating add-ons as first class citizens will attract high quality
developers that will not only add functionality through add-ons but will
likely contribute to "core" Blender development as well.
--Addendum--
This was written before your latest email, but I feel it still has many
good points. One of the things consistent in both emails is your desire
for add-ons to be moved to an online repository, however, there are
already several online repositories that feature add-ons (one of which
is the Blender Market) and it seems obvious to me that adding another
into the mix is far less valuable than bundling them with Blender.
@Dalai
I know that not everything in the wiki shows up in the "fancy" release
notes, however looking at this version's specific release notes, the
majority of subjects were at least mentioned except for the add-on
related topics.
Interestingly enough, add-ons are much better represented in the release
notes up until 2.92, although never in their own section, which I might
expect given the unique position they hold. Regardless of where they
show up in the release notes, this brings us back to one of my initial
questions as to when is the cutoff for editing the wiki to make it into
the "fancy" release notes, or at least of having the chance of making it
into the "fancy" release notes.
Ryan
On 2021-06-12 06:00 AM, bf-committers-requ...@blender.org wrote:
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2021 16:44:40 +0200
From: Dalai Felinto<da...@blender.org>
To: bf-blender developers<bf-committers@blender.org>
Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Blender 2.93 Released!
Message-ID:
<CAKD4fWfWNmxCsvCJoJYMQ52n15MWhu1YpnsaNut_n=qf-2h...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
As for the "fancy" release notes. Not everything that is in the wiki shows
up there.
The communication team makes a selection on what is worth showing, what to
simply mention, and what to leave only to the wiki. The "Blender Features
in 5 minutes" and the reel editors also reverse the right to pick and
choose what is highlighted.
-Dalai-
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dalai Felinto -da...@blender.org -www.blender.org
Blender Development Coordinator
Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Op vr 11 jun. 2021 om 15:11 schreef Brecht Van Lommel via Bf-committers <
bf-committers@blender.org>:
Personally, I wouldn't change this.
Add-ons authors are credited in the add-on preferences, where you go to
enable the add-on. The fact that they are bundled rather than installed
from an online repository (which is what we should do eventually) makes
little practical difference I think.
For the release notes, I don't think we should be putting much emphasis on
add-ons that often have a UI/UX and design different than core Blender,
usually created by individuals without review. The freedom to do that
creates very useful functionality and leads to fast development, but I
wouldn't market that as part of Blender the product in the same way.
The way I see it is that as an add-on author you get both the freedom and
the responsibility for development, docs, and marketing. If anything we
should decouple such things more, rather than integrating them.
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:07 AM Ryan Inch via Bf-committers <
bf-committers@blender.org> wrote:
Hi Dalai,
I'm not talking about an add-on in particular, I'm referring to add-ons
in general.
In regard to your first point, we are agreed that the credit gen script
is skipping add-ons; however, from what you've shown me, it looks like
it would be easy to support. So I'm wondering why it is that add-ons
are being skipped and what can be done to correct it for the 2.93
release?
In regard to your second point, I am aware that it is the responsibility
of the developer to document changes in the wiki release notes, I do so
for every release, and I thank you for your willingness to help with any
problems accessing the wiki. I was, however, referring to the fancier
release notes [1] that are compiled from the wiki release notes, and
that these have been lacking a section for add-ons recently. So, what
is required to have an add-ons section added to the 'fancy' release
notes?
Ryan
[1]https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-93/
On 2021-06-07 06:00 AM,bf-committers-requ...@blender.org wrote:
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2021 10:05:36 +0200
From: Dalai Felinto<da...@blender.org>
To: bf-blender developers<bf-committers@blender.org>
Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Blender 2.93 Released!
Message-ID:
<CAKD4fWcP41W8FFQW+5Tc5cAEwY=
zavhavyzc5rws4jbbg1m...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hi Ryan,
Are you talking about an add-on in particular? There are two related
but
separate topics in your email:
1. Contributors credit
The script that generates the credits [1] is indeed be skipping the
add-on
repositories.
2. Release notes
It is the responsibility of any developer that contributes code, to
document the changes and mention them in the (wiki) release notes [2].
If
an add-on maintainer needs wiki access they can contact me directly via
email or as dfelinto in blender.chat.
[1] -
https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/BDT/browse/master/utils/credits_git_gen.py
[2] -
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.93/Add-ons
-Dalai-
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dalai Felinto -da...@blender.org -www.blender.org
Blender Development Coordinator
Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Op za 5 jun. 2021 om 07:10 schreef Ryan Inch via Bf-committers <
bf-committers@blender.org>:
Congratulations on the release! Everything looks good, there seems to
be tons of great improvements,
and the reels are quite impressive.
However, I have noticed that Add-ons are treated differently in the
release notes. Judging by the emails from the bf-extensions mailing
list, many of the Add-ons bundled with Blender receive dozens of
updates
between each release, but this hasn't lately been advertised in the
release notes (aside from the occasional mention in @SouthernShotty's
5
minute videos, very grateful to him for that), plus the
authors/maintainers and their commits to these Add-ons don't seem to
be
credited on the credits page[1]. Since the Add-ons are bundled with
Blender, is there a reason that they aren't credited at release?
If the reason for this is, in part, that authors/maintainers aren't
adding their changes to the wiki version of the
release notes in time, then I would like to inquire as to when the
cutoff for editing the wiki is to make it into the
release notes, or what else could be done to have them included?
Ryan Inch (Imaginer)
Developer of the Collection Manager Add-on.
[1]https://www.blender.org/about/credits/
On 2021-06-03 06:00 AM,bf-committers-requ...@blender.org wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2021 19:18:32 +0200
From: Dalai Felinto<da...@blender.org>
To: bf-blender developers<bf-committers@blender.org>
Subject: [Bf-committers] Blender 2.93 Released!
Message-ID:
<
cakd4fwfyvsxy6ftazypgudjtnnxow1ftewsza4j5kbuwjkn...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hi,
Blender 2.93 LTS is officially released.
The release notes are here:
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-93/
You can check two great videos with everything 2.93 related:
* Reel:https://youtu.be/fxNlpQYRz7s
* Features:https://youtu.be/mnnMFJ3iWH0
Congratulations everyone!
-Dalai-
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dalai Felinto -da...@blender.org -www.blender.org
Blender Development Coordinator
Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
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