Their 2023 report isn't out yet, but "corporate patron" tier members contribute at least €240K/year, which is a not-insignificant amount of Blender's total €2,170,250 in income for 2022 (page 96). According to the same report, they also contribute development work to the Cycles renderer (page 95).

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

WTH would they develop cycles it's not like they're making movies or such. Or really anything that's not interactive. But yes meta does a lot of open source work in general. Probably should've specified "a product they make money with".

Hmmm page 95 values the EPIC megagrant at 87,540 yet they're in the corporate patron tier, should be platinum.

[–] atocci@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago

Don't forget this report is for 2022, not 2023. The grant for 2023 might be closer to the 2021 level since they're back in patron tier. I can only speculate on what their interests in Cycles is, but maybe they use Blender for making ads and such.

I'm sure their open source contributions aren't out of charity though. They're getting a return on their investment somehow, even if only in the things they use the projects for. I think the open source work would be a better comparison for their ActivityPub integration either way though.