{"id":658,"date":"2013-07-18T23:32:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T21:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blender.org\/?page_id=658"},"modified":"2025-08-07T17:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T15:04:10","slug":"license","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/about\/license\/","title":{"rendered":"License"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-md-6\">\n<div class=\"box\">\n<h2>The Software<\/h2>\n<p>Blender is released under the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/gpl.html\">GNU General Public License<\/a> (GPL, or &#8220;free software&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>This license grants people a number of freedoms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You are free to use Blender, for any purpose<\/li>\n<li>You are free to distribute Blender<\/li>\n<li>You can study how Blender works and change it<\/li>\n<li>You can distribute changed versions of Blender<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The GPL strictly aims at protecting these freedoms, requiring everyone to share their modifications when they also share the software in public. That aspect is commonly referred to as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Copyleft\">Copyleft<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Blender Foundation and its projects on blender.org are committed to preserving Blender as free software.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>License details<\/h2>\n<p>The source code we develop at blender.org is default being licensed as <a href=\"http:\/\/download.blender.org\/release\/GPL-license.txt\">GNU GPL Version 2 or later<\/a>. Some modules we make are using more permissive licenses, though, for example, the Blender Cycles rendering engine is available as <a href=\"http:\/\/opensource.org\/licenses\/Apache-2.0\">Apache 2.0<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Blender also uses many modules or libraries from other projects. For example, Python uses the <a href=\"http:\/\/opensource.org\/licenses\/Python-2.0\">Python License<\/a>; Bullet uses the <a href=\"http:\/\/opensource.org\/licenses\/zlib-license.php\">Zlib License<\/a>; Libmv uses the <a href=\"http:\/\/opensource.org\/licenses\/MIT\">MIT License<\/a>; and OSL, a <a href=\"http:\/\/opensource.org\/licenses\/BSD-3-Clause\">BSD License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>All the components that together make Blender are compatible under the newer <a href=\"http:\/\/download.blender.org\/release\/GPL3-license.txt\">GNU GPL Version 3<\/a> or later. That is also the license to use for any distribution of Blender binaries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-md-6\">\n<div class=\"box\">\n<h2>Your Artwork<\/h2>\n<p>What you create with Blender is your sole property. All your artwork &#8211; images or movie files &#8211; including the .blend files and other data files Blender can write, is free for you to use as you like.<\/p>\n<p>That means that Blender can be used commercially by artists, by studios to make animation films or VFX, by game artists to work on commercial games, by scientists for research, and by students in educational institutions.<\/p>\n<p>Blender&#8217;s GNU GPL license guarantees you this freedom. Nobody is ever permitted to take it away, in contrast to trial or &#8220;educational&#8221; versions of commercial software that will forbid your work in commercial situations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"box\">\n<h2>Privacy and Internet access<\/h2>\n<p>Blender respects your privacy, <strong>no registration<\/strong> is needed, <strong>no connection to the internet is made<\/strong> if you decide to install and use Blender. Blender does <strong>not need internet<\/strong> to function properly.<\/p>\n<p>Some add-ons bundled with Blender may access the internet for additional services. These add-ons are not enabled on installing Blender. These add-ons are not required to be enabled for proper functioning of the software, nor will any Blender function ask for enabling such add-ons.<\/p>\n<p>Add-ons that require internet will ask a user explicit permission to use internet while or after enabling the add-on.<\/p>\n<p>Note: this applies to the official version provided via blender.org. We always recommend you to use the official releases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-md-6\">\n<div class=\"box\">\n<h2>Sharing or selling Blender add-ons (Python scripts)<\/h2>\n<p>Blender&#8217;s Python API is an integral part of the software, used to define the user interface or develop tools for example. The GNU GPL license therefore requires that such scripts (if published) are being shared under a GPL compliant license. You are free to sell such scripts, but the sales then is restricted to the download service itself. Your customers will receive the script under the same license (GPL), with the same free conditions as everyone has for Blender.<\/p>\n<h2>FAQ for Artists<\/h2>\n<p>We collected the most common <a title=\"support - FAQ\" href=\"http:\/\/www.blender.org\/support\/faq\/\">Frequently Asked Questions<\/a> here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-md-6\">\n<div class=\"box\">\n<h2>Website license<\/h2>\n<p>Most of the blender website is available as Creative Commons Attribution, with some exceptions. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/about\/website\/\">Read about that here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The website&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/privacy-policy\/\">privacy policy<\/a> you can read here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Software Blender is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL, or &#8220;free software&#8221;). This license grants people a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123469,"featured_media":31133,"parent":103,"menu_order":69,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-generic.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-658","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92960,"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/658\/revisions\/92960"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}