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3DMoFun Blender scam

kat · 1 · 14698

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Offline kat

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Was just catching up with some Blender related news when this one popped up on the radar. According to BlenderFoundation, a company in China is 'abusing' the open source status of Blender 3D to solicit funds from the Chinese Government for a training/education program. The 'new' version of Blender is called "3DMoFun". It's the usual 'change some logos and indents, but use all the assets and images available in the community' type of deal, much like IllusionMage/3DMagix/3DMagixPro scam. Nothing new there then. Apparently (at least according to the page linked to above), there's nothing that can be done about this. Or is there?.

Given the fact that Foundation knows why this version of Blender is doing the rounds (thanks to the awesome Chinese Blender community over at Blendercn.org who discovered this), it's something of a surprise to read that "nothing can be done" about it when the opposite is the case, with a bit of thought that is. There's quite a lot that could be done that's still within the realms of GPL. But one would assume this to have already been discussed or at least looked in to? You (as in the Foundation), know "who", "what", "when", "where" and "why". You (Foundation again), also know the intent behind this particular scam, and are well within your (Foundation) 'rights' to send off a few emails to the involved parties, China.gov in particular, with a brief "hello" and "erm, yes, well..." to get this shutdown. Only the Right holder can do that... inaction on the last scam mentioned above lead to the Internet being flooded with junk as a direct result of similarly simply throwing the proverbial hands in the air.

As has been said before, the Blender 'brand' is just as (one could argue that it's far more) important as the app itself. Until there's a fundamental realisation of that fact, Blender will continue to languish with an ostensibly non-professional user-base and all the efforts to pursue that demographic will result in treading water.