Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor.

[Gast]

@fsiddi You understand you are helping them accomplish *something* right?

Anthropic isn’t a neutral party. You understand this, yes?

Stop trying to pretend this is a financial transaction that occurs in a vacuum. We’re not idiots, and neither are you.

[Gast]

@brhfl @Blender If AI enters the Blender arena then I won't, and I was about to. I'll wait.

[Gast]

@Blender This is really disappointing and really seems like you do not value artists. AI is horrible for the environment and I'd love to see Blender take a principled stance against it.

[Gast]

@fsiddi @desttinghim you're correct, criticizing a company that proudly boasts about bankrupting your entire user base isn't going to help anyone.

[Gast]

@Blender

Maybe "Blender" should be renamed "Digger" because what we have here is a case study in making a bad mistake and digging in and burying yourself.

The "controversial nature of the membership" was the problem, not the wording, if that helps.

[Gast]

@Blender

Welp, alright then.

[Gast]

@Blender Well, that answers the question of whether or not I should try Blender. I'll stick to software that doesn't steal from me or wreck the environment.

[Gast]

@Blender hey y'all, don't say tone deaf. Just not a good look.

[Gast]

@Blender fucked it, lads.

[Gast]

@Mimesatwork @Blender
I guess you can just use old versions of Blender from before they filled the program with unwanted privacy destroying bloatware

good job Blender, you threw away all the good will in the world

[Gast]

@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.

[Gast]

@fsiddi @art_codesmith This is nothing. This feedback from users is really just a fraction of what's warranted given what an egregious breach of trust this announcement is.

Horrible decision. Horrible optics. Horrible sponsor.

In all seriousness, anyone involved in approving this should draft public apologies and either leave or be booted from the project.

[Gast]

@Blender My disappointment is inexorable

[Gast]

@Blender Could Blender still maintain its mission while Anthropic is a corporate sponsor? The scale of Anthropic and its nature as a corporation make me feel uneasy, sadly.

[Gast]

@Blender fuck off

[Gast]

@Blender noooooooo

32 years thrown away in one day. It really is the worst possible decision.

[Gast]

@fsiddi @robertguetzkow i agree 100% with Robert here.
Francesco, una delusione terribile

[Gast]

@Blender@mastodon.social /That's/ the less tone-deaf version?

You are taking money from a company whose products are at least partially, *if not fully,* responsible for the bombing of a school full of children, and are *provably* responsible for cognitive decline.

I had once hoped to learn your software. I now hope you appreciate the past tense used in the previous sentence.

I understand needing money to continue to exist under capitalism. What I don't understand or approve of is taking *their* money.

[Gast]

@AnnieBuddy @Blender I guess ChildMurderer 3D is probably the natural branding choice after this.

[Gast]

@Blender What you have done is make a public statement that the developers, or at least the management, care more about funding than they do the opinions of the artists who use the project. There was no consultation and you just created a divide between the two communities for no good reason, and hopped into bed with the people dedicated to stealing the livelihoods of artists and creators, and using their work to fuel it, along with the colossal amount of energy and water their datacenters consume.

Anthropic are not an ethical company, they stripmine the internet and artistic works harder than anyone, they use the same polluting datacenters as the other companies and are directly tied to the death of children in the middle east despite their milquetoast pushback against the Trump admin. As far as anyone is concerned, you may as well have announced a partnership with Palantir, they no better in terms of deeds, only their PR is, and you have sacrificed a lot of good will to help them with that.

You can try to spin it any way you want but the issue is not the words, it is the action. I hope you feel that loss of trust was worth it when the money spigot gets turned off in the next year or two as AI companies are faced with the financial reality of the expensive operations involved with their rolling coal product, and have to start cutting costs.