*********************
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/copyleft/gpl.html>`__.


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

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

One of the largest community forums is `Blender Artists <http://blenderartists.org/forum/>`__,
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`
and `Stack Exchange <https://blender.stackexchange.com/>`__.

There are also more official sources of support,
such as `Certified Trainers <https://www.blender.org/certification/>`__
and the `Blender Cloud <https://cloud.blender.org/>`__.
If you think you have found an issue with Blender, you can easily
`report a bug <https://developer.blender.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/>`__.

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 `developer.blender.org <https://developer.blender.org/>`__ system
- Various `mailing lists <https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo>`__
- 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:

Blender Chat
============

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

You can join these channels:

- `#today <https://blender.chat/channel/today>`__
  For getting answers from the community.
- `#blender-coders <https://blender.chat/channel/blender-coders>`__
  For developers to discuss Blender development.
- `#python <https://blender.chat/channel/today>`__
  For support for developers using the Python API.
- `#docs <https://blender.chat/channel/docs>`__
  For discussion related to Blender's 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://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/AskUsAnything>`__