The recent announcement about Anthropic joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Patron member has raised concerns from the community around how we engage with AI topics.

[blender@mastodon.social]

The recent announcement about Anthropic joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Patron member has raised concerns from the community around how we engage with AI topics.

This is how we plan to address the issue: https://www.blender.org/news/upcoming-blender-development-fund-and-ai-policies/

#b3d #DevFund

[seanking@woem.men]

@Blender@mastodon.social I'm glad you're not keeping them on as a member and only receiving the funds once. That being said, you absolutely need to reject funding and membership from AI-focused companies (e.g. Anthropic and OpenAI) going forward.

[e_i_s_f_u_c_h_s@toot.cat]

@Blender I think it is important to stress that the real reason for the community to react this way is not fear of them taking control or influencing decisions, but the very idea of taking "dirty money" from a company like this. I think the decision to keep it as a one-time donation is kinda-sorta fine in this situation, but in the future you should simply not accept these donations at all.

[iralmeida@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Blender

Personally very happy to see a reversal 🧡

The association with an AI company didn't bring joy and I for one am very relieved to see that getting heard + an upcoming stance on AI for future reassurances.

[sybren@fosstodon.org]

@iralmeida @Blender

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@Blender

So... you're still accepting it, but just calling it something totally different, which I assume is for appearance only, to wash away whatever stigma is now attached to it.

Seriously?

Patron level = €240k

Includes: Logo and url on website, social media mention, credit in official reports and at events, Developer liaison, frontpage mention, board contact, Press release, tech blogpost, dedicated product manager for your area.

#Anthropic Sow's ear ≠ silk purse

[mancube@pnw.zone]

@Blender cool let's see if we can get you some money from MBS next

[iralmeida@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@lumiworx @Blender
I believe the point is that it is no longer a dev fund membership. Therefore no longer includes any of those things.

[aras@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Blender good, thank you!

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@iralmeida @Blender

That's what was announced in today's release, but my point in setting out the details is to point out what their expectations were, and once Pandora's treasure box has a deposit, it still had to be opened to accept it.

From what comments I've been reading over the last 2 days, what they have been shouting about is _not_ about how it was received... but that it was accepted _at all_.

Tone deafness or 'reframing it' isn't the underlying issue.

[amosmulder@mastodon.social]

@Blender I'm not sure what to think about still accepting the money, it's a compromise where I would have loved to see a very clear 'no thanks' to such a harmful company.

But I'm happy you considered our feedback and did something with it at least.

Personally I hope you can find another way to deal with corporate funding in the future. I'd rather wait a year longer for a new version of Blender than seeing some of these mega(maga)corps like google and meta on the fund.

[higgins@hachyderm.io]

@violetmadder @Blender Indeed, must be really easy being chairman for that foundation, just accept whatever bloody money and if there is an outrage you backpedal as little as possible while keeping the cash. No need to think ahead or have, you know, ethics.

[bradley@techhub.social]

@Blender oh nice another one of these:

"We should have opened up more conversation and perspectives from contributors before making this decision, and for that we are sorry."

Who could have predicted this?

[dianaprobst@mastodon.art]

@Blender 'engage with AI topics' is some good corporate speak.

GenAI has stolen the work of artists I know, and the scrapers it requires are a drain on the entire web. It's good you have understood the anger exists, but please prove you understand why it is there as well. People are about to be able to use Blender, trivially, to produce the sorts of thing I and many friends make *because we made it and our work has been examined without our consent*. That is a huge thing.

[allow_me_to_illustrate@mastodon.social]

@Blender Still not happy with the acceptance of the one-time donation. But I can at least recognise the effort to listen to your community in this matter, and appreciate it.

[dianaprobst@mastodon.art]

@Blender It's also catastrophically expensive in terms of computing power. Those data centres are not small, and they are often built in the sorts of vulnerable places that already have little protection. They are then adding energy cost to simple tasks. Please do not make that easier. I love your work. I want to be able to keep using it.

[mxchara@seattle.pink]

@Blender You could just NOT, you know? Is Anthropic's money—dripping with fascist slime—really THAT tempting to you?

[nawer_rapter@mastodon.social]

@Blender if this text doesn't include "we're going to kill everyone in anthropic" it's probably not going to work sadly (yes we do want anthropic to die)
Anyways good on you for stealing money from some douchebags, just don't let them speak even a single word, in fact, erase them from the list of people who paid you. They aren't people anymore anyways.

[mxchara@seattle.pink]

@amosmulder Is @Blender's software even all that good? One can only hope that there are, in fact, alternatives in the works—from what I've seen so far anyway the Blender "user experience" is a deeply unpleasant one, so the knowledge that Blender's also been sopping up lots of technofascist cash suggests to me the crying need to abandon Blender altogether. Now that's a long-term sort of answer; it takes time to make software as complex as Blender. But holy heck...it would be nice if there were something else out there. Almost anything else!

[sb@metroholografix.ca]

@Blender
Fucking sellouts