Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor.
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All right, Francesco here - CEO at Blender. I'm going to spend some time to try and respond. If you have direct questions or comments, reply here!
@fsiddi you miscalculated what partnerships the Blender community would condone, and now the project's reputation has been damaged.
1) What is your plan for rebuilding community trust in you personally, and the project's stewardship team as a whole?
2) Does the project have any guidelines for vetting donors? Are there any established criteria that would cause the project to automatically reject an offer?
3) Your were aware that the donor would be controversial. Was there any internal discussion about potentially not accepting the offer, or alternatively putting the matter to a community vote? If so, what considerations overrode these?
4) Are there any strings, explicit or implicit, on this donation? Does Anthropic get any influence that a non-donor company does not?
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@fsiddi Let’s ignore the lost trust and users in the replies here saying they’ll never use it again. Let’s also ignore the lack of clarity about any strings attached, or Blender’s ethical alignment.
How much did they give? How much in donations has been lost since the announcement? Is it going to be significantly more than people would give for this to *not* happen? Even if it was, is that worth it?
It may be too late, but I’d like to see transparency about how much was donated. Any discussions with them around the donation. A return of those funds. A clear and explicit policy about AI contributions in the codebase, ideally forbidding them (but there already are some, which calls into question code licenses and ownership). After all of the above, and if done in the right spirit to support open source and artists, and with significantly better comms, I’d like to see a donation drive with the goal of beating the anthropic contribution.
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@ChocoDrawing @Blender most of those companies have produced image generators of their own.
I get why artists are upset about genAI, but then why not get some money from that branch back to the artists? as long as blender doesn't make blender worse, I don't see any (new) issue to be honest
@anthropy @Blender
I was under the impression that an opensource art-tool had an actual spine. That software made for artists actually respected art
(and human life, anthropic literally helped the US bomb schoolkids ffs)The morally correct choice would have been to publicly announce that they refused.
They have funding, they don't NEED that money.
But like so many others they chose greed over integrity, they sold their users/souls for a quick buck.I'm not surprised, just disapointed.
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Make sure to check out the full message on https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/ and the funding policy at https://fund.blender.org/funding-policy/ to get the complete picture.
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
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Note: partially reworded the social media announcement so it sounds less tone-deaf about the controversial nature of the membership.
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
@Blender There are few FOSS projects and organizations I have thought of so highly and promoted so vigorously in the past as Blender. Heck, I have taught Blender courses on universities and schools for free ever since back in Blender 2.3 days - let alone all those great learning DVDs I have bought and the local screenings of open movie projects I have organized in order to support Blender's vision.
There is also no project that has lost all my respect so quickly.
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
@Blender I am sure that there are other forks to be had.
I could not find anything regarding the Bforartists project's position on AI during my quick search of the site.
I have no connection with Bforartists and have not used their product.
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
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@Blender There are few FOSS projects and organizations I have thought of so highly and promoted so vigorously in the past as Blender. Heck, I have taught Blender courses on universities and schools for free ever since back in Blender 2.3 days - let alone all those great learning DVDs I have bought and the local screenings of open movie projects I have organized in order to support Blender's vision.
There is also no project that has lost all my respect so quickly.
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All right, Francesco here - CEO at Blender. I'm going to spend some time to try and respond. If you have direct questions or comments, reply here!
Hi @fsiddi tbh, as long there are not some expectations from them, hope they are not buying something, than the money shall be used for good of Blender. How many functionalities / man days of developers can be achieved by this money? Are there some expectations from their side based on provided donation?
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> In these uncertain and divisive times, we appreciate Anthropic offering support to the Blender project [...]
I wanted to write some thoughtful reply to that, but you know what..
Simply, fuck off.
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Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor. This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/
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And this is how they benefit. This was the trade off. No one wants this except Anthropic.
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All right, Francesco here - CEO at Blender. I'm going to spend some time to try and respond. If you have direct questions or comments, reply here!
You find it "intense".
Imagine how blender users felt, when they find out that you took blood money. Doesn't matter if it is / was a single donation.
You were naive, to say the least, thinking it will be taken like other past patrons.
We are into an AI war for survival. Either you like it, believe it, or not. When this bubble explodes, and it will do, is taking a chunk of global economy with it.
I'm even more ashamed to find out in a toot from someone else, you are accepting code reviewed or generated with AI. 🤮
https://mastodon.social/@mrmasterkeyboard/116483286991823696
Other #FLOSS projects did a stance on not accepting this #AISlop, because they know it does not work. What it is worse it polutes the source code with code that Anthropic could claim as "theirs" in the future.
What crossed your mind to take a decision that will stain Blender and the Blender Foundation forever? Even if you reject it now.
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Make sure to check out the full message on https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/ and the funding policy at https://fund.blender.org/funding-policy/ to get the complete picture.
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Note: partially reworded the social media announcement so it sounds less tone-deaf about the controversial nature of the membership.
