Martin Schitter wrote:well -- perhaps not on the linux platform
-- but it's even much more targeted against the "advanced" edition and similar unaffordable professional solutions (e.g. mistika ultima and baselight), which often make use/profit of the advantages of free software as an indispensable base for really powerful high end products, but do not like to give much in return to the concerned community. as a result, linux is perhaps the most common working horse in real demanding production environments in the film industries, but for ordinary users of this platform there aren't much satisfying options available. we still have to beg servilely for the most natural features and more acceptable support of our common working environments.
I'd not call a 300 buck product "unaffordable", given what Resolve Studio offers. I got a 2nd hand dongle for 160, for my hobbyist NLE work. And nobody forces you to buy it. Their free version offers most features of the studio version. If they wouldn't offer a linux variant, there were less options for linux users. You're also don't "have to beg", just use something else if DR doesn't fit your requirements. As far as BMD doesn't violate any licenses and terms of use, they don't owe anybody anything, besides their paying customers.
nevertheless i still think, that the rigorous rules of the GNU public license and the protection of open source software against absorption by profit driven interest and exclusion of access still makes sense. this kind of radical thoroughgoingness may look again a little bit nostalgic and out of fashion in the meanwhile, but linux could hardly have been created resp. survived without this kind of clear rules. limiting the utilization of valuable free software by closed source products, is more or less the nucleus of this approach. it usually isn't a very powerful mean, because there are many ways to bypass and ignore this intentions, but to some degree it even stand the test in real world. and if you accept this simple idea, my previous post shouldn't look utterly crazy and indefensible.
While I do appreciate your "open source spirit", you seem to be misunderstanding how the open source/free software ecosystem works. Without closed source software running on top of open source operating systems/middleware stacks/libraries, the market cap and hence the investment from involved parties would be much less. Just look who the main contributors for big OSS projects are. That's full time coders paid by companies monetising open source solutions. In an ideal world, everything would be OSS/FS, but that's not how current economy works. So your "all or nothing" approach is a bit naive. The trend goes into the OSS/FS direction, and that is a good thing. Open source companies acquire software, and release it to the public in a "free as in speech" manner (like Red Hat did with a lot of products). Many companies realise that they can make a living from support agreements, and open up their source. But still there are niches, where companies want to protect their value. Also there are more licensing options besides GPL. That's where BSD, LGPL, CC etc comes into place. And the community still profits, because one can use an open platform and run a closed NLE/CG suite on it. I'm all for options. If linux users were only allowed to run GPL software on top, we wouldn't be anywhere close to the point where we are today. Databases, SAP, Android, in-house software on top of LAMP/Jboss/etc.. There are endless examples. Don't get me wrong, I'd love an open sourced DR, and would still pay for it (donation, support, whatever). But it's just not realistic to expect every closed source company to release their source. Things will become commodity over time, with open source alternatives getting better. If you're unhappy with the BMD offering, just go ahead and submit code for open source alternatives. That would be time better spent than your personal vendetta vs BMD.