
*********************
The Blender Community
*********************

Being freely available from the start, even while it was closed source, considerably helped Blender's adoption by the
community. A large, stable, and active community of users has gathered around Blender since 1998. The community showed
its support for Blender in 2002 when they helped raise €100,000 in seven weeks to enable Blender to go Open Source
under the `GNU GPL License <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>`__.


Independent Sites
=================

There are `several independent websites <https://www.blender.org/community/>`__ such as forums, blogs, news, and
tutorial sites dedicated to Blender.

One of the largest community forums is `Blender Artists <https://blenderartists.org/>`__, where Blender users gather
to show off their creations, get feedback, ask and offer help and, in general, discuss Blender.


Getting Support
===============

Blender's community is one of its greatest features, so apart from this user manual, there are many different ways to
get support from other users, such as :ref:`blender-chat`, `Stack Exchange <https://blender.stackexchange.com/>`__,
and `Reddit <https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/>`__.

For studios and organizations there is `Enterprise support <https://www.blender.org/support/>`__, and for studios
looking to add Blender to their pipeline, `Blender Studio <https://studio.blender.org/>`__ contains documentation and
training material around this topic. If you think you have found an issue with Blender, please `report a bug
<https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/new?template=.gitea%2fissue_template%2fbug.yaml>`__.

More details about support can be found on the `support page <https://www.blender.org/support/>`__.


Development
===========

Being open source, Blender welcomes development from volunteers. Communication between developers is done mostly
through three platforms:

- The `projects.blender.org <https://projects.blender.org/>`__ system
- `Developer Forum <https://devtalk.blender.org/>`__
- Online Chat (see below)

If you are interested in helping develop Blender, see the `Get Involved <https://www.blender.org/get-involved/>`__
page.


.. _blender-chat:

Chat
====

For real-time discussion, we have `chat.blender.org <https://chat.blender.org>`__ which uses `Blender ID
<https://id.blender.org>`__ for authentication.

You can join these channels:

- `#general <https://chat.blender.org/#/room/#general:blender.org>`__
  For general chat with the community.
- `#blender-coders <https://chat.blender.org/#/room/#blender-coders:blender.org>`__
  For developers to discuss Blender development.
- `#python <https://chat.blender.org/#/room/#python:blender.org>`__
  For support for developers using the Python API.
- `#docs <https://chat.blender.org/#/room/#docs:blender.org>`__
  For discussion related to Blender's documentation.
- `#translations <https://chat.blender.org/#/room/#translations:blender.org>`__
  For discussion related to translating Blender and its documentation.


Other Useful Links
==================

- `Blender FAQ <https://www.blender.org/support/faq/>`__ (Can I use Blender commercially? What is GPL/GNU? ...)
- `Demo and benchmark files <https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/>`__
- Developer's `Ask Us Anything! <https://developer.blender.org/docs/handbook/new_developers/faq/>`__
