Word is spreading throughout the Blender community of a few companies (3DMagix, 3DMagixPro, IllusionMage) who are rebranding Blender and using copy-written material to sell "their" product.
Ton Roosendaal explains:
With the success of blender.org projects, and publishing all the exciting Blender releases, we're now being challenged by third parties who like to ride the waves and do business with Blender.
There's nothing wrong with that. In its very nature, GNU GPL is about freedom, the freedom not only to use and modify the sources, but also to distribute and resell our releases under another brand name.
Recently we received several concerned emails and forum postings from people who were worried about Blender resellers using especially Ebay to sell Blender.
...
On their web pages they intentionally hide that the products are distributions of GNU GPL licensed software, and that the software is freely downloadable as well. More-over, even after contacting them several times, they don't remove copyrighted content from their websites.
Here's a link to the full article on the Blender Foundation's site: 3DMagix and IllusionMage, scam or open source leeches?
Related articles
- Ton Roosendaal, Sintel Producer and head of Blender Institute (creativecommons.org)
- Watch Sintel, a new open-source animated short from the Blender Institute (creativecommons.org)
- 10+ Amazing Short Films You'd Not Believe Were Made With Free Software (makeuseof.com)
If you look at the lay-out, general design and text of these websites you'ld probably get to the same conclusion as i did: 3DMagix, 3DMagixPro, IllusionMage are one and the same person/company.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem that way.
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