Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor.
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@Blender New Right now, for Blender, a community of artists who often see all sorts of ethical issues in AI, for obvious reasons, as Ton has pointed out many times, and with the newer, younger management, this choice definitely looks controversial. It’s a bit like a charity that helps crime victims taking money from Al Capone. I get the guidelines, but this is more of an ethical matter. That said, AI also has positive sides and won’t be able to be ignored forever.
@Blender Anyway, out of all of them, despite the ethical concerns about AI, Anthropic is the least bad. That’s cold comfort, but at least it wasn’t some other one. Now I wonder; would Blender and the new management teams have taken money from Elon Musk, or from Sam Altman, or from Peter Thiel? That’s a question worth asking.
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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.
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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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@Blender I would really like to know what is average donation to Blender per screamer in this lovely thread...
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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!
No questions. But I would like to point out this announcement went sideways here on the Fedi for absolutely foreseeable reasons.
As a group we are anti-AI-bubble. Not necessarily anti-AI or even anti-LLMs, although some don't make that distinction. *But the great majority of us on the Fedi are against everything to do with how AI is currently being marketed, delivered, and funded.*
So, there is a sense in which the announcement was like an enormous wet fart while people are eating…
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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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Why take corporate money? Why take THIS corporate money? Why not throw this out to the Blender community at large and include them in this decision BEFORE accepting this money? The complete disregard for user's very valid concerns with regard to AI and especially Anthropic AI money in a beloved FOSS project is insulting in the current world. How could you not foresee the blowback?
@noondlyt Blender has accepted a lot of corporate funding over the years. In the press release we try to make it clear that this donation will be used at Blender's discretion, but the origin of the donation is very much not appreciated ideed.
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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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@noondlyt Blender has accepted a lot of corporate funding over the years. In the press release we try to make it clear that this donation will be used at Blender's discretion, but the origin of the donation is very much not appreciated ideed.
And this is how they benefit. This was the trade off. No one wants this except Anthropic.
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Note: partially reworded the social media announcement so it sounds less tone-deaf about the controversial nature of the membership.
@Blender "Thanks for the edit, Claude!"
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Note: partially reworded the social media announcement so it sounds less tone-deaf about the controversial nature of the membership.
@Blender that money was partially gained by killing little iranian schoolgirls for the us-military.
You have given yourself only two options here:
Either you don't know where your money comes from(bad)
Or you just don't care(worse)
And this is still ignoring the fact that ANY generative-ai only exists because it steals art directly from your userbase.
But that's just what ai-companies do right?
So you seem to think that's "fine" and "acceptable"Enjoy your blood money I guess
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@fsiddi sure, I'll bite.
1). Did you do any market research whatsoever before deciding to tank your reputation?
2). Are you planning to use Claude to draft your resignation letter in light of how badly you screwed up? -
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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 blender has been the biggest success story in FOSS since Linux. Why do this? Are there no actual artists or creators involved in these decisions?
Anthropic is also significantly involved with war and violence. Does the project accept those kind of sponsors now?
I feel like accepting this sponsorship is going to have knock on effects for the project that go much further than the size of the cheque you’ll get - you’re damaging trust, not just with the users ( not that the project leadership cares about what users/artists think, clearly ) but with devs and the people who contribute to the project. They’re not dumb, and they don’t have to donate their time if they don’t feel the project deserves it
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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!
In the communications it appear that the Blender project were aware that this would be controversial.
First, as the CEO of Blender why do you value the blood money from Anthropic more than the trust and goodwill of your users and individual supporters?
Secondly, as the CEO of Blender do you and the Blender project care about ethics and if so how is that consistent with taking blood money from Anthropic with their well documented practices?
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Note: partially reworded the social media announcement so it sounds less tone-deaf about the controversial nature of the membership.
@Blender
So…you decided to make it worse by thinking that the problem was the way you said it?You’re taking money from the people whose entire business model is taking the money out of creatives’ pockets and then telling us to go fuck ourselves.
That money, at best, will be withdrawn from when the bubble pops, likely with catastrophic effects on Blender.
At worst, it will continue to flow because they continue to extract all art.
