Open source is not Free software. The blog post is about how Blender is firmly behind the GPL and free software, which is in opposition to just having available source code without assured user freedoms.
Yeah, I never said that it is :) I honestly don't get the point of your comments, but I think you may not be getting the point of mine either.
To clarify: the article contains advice about how to fund operations for plugin developers. I doubt that it is viable for all plugin developers to fund their operations off of documentation and services. I am just saying that we should be honest and express that funding the development directly will be needed and probably the only way to get it is donations. That's really all I am saying here.
I think a lot of people get confused about that. There are hundreds (probably more) of paid software that offers it's source code up. You can use it to learn from or make improvements if you want but must pay if you want to actually use it.
One example is I was recently messing around with Space Engineers code. Keen software gives opens it up but doesn't mean you can just download the code and get the game for free
That does not comply with the official (OSI) definition of open source and is a misuse of the term. It's a pity that people get away with this and cause this kind of confusion.
The actual Open Source Definition is much like the Free Software Definition, in the letter. A source-available license wouldn't be OSI-approved, so it wouldn't technically be open source.
On the legal side, free software and open source could very well be considered sinonyms (if that makes sense). The actual difference is one of attitude and end-goals.
TFA refers heavily to 'free' as in the freedoms associated with this.
You cite 'open source' as something that you admire.
It's well known that 'free software' describes an attitude that the 'open source' crowd wasn't as keen to embrace, hence the subsequent linguistic wrangling.
The article refers to a "free/open source business model". Even there the terms are used in a somewhat identical fashion.
I really don't see how this kind of linguistic wrangling helps. Instead it kind of diverts from my initial point and drives the discussion into nitpicking.
If you don't admire the spirit of free software as well / instead, then you may have missed the point of the article.