Welcome Anthropic as a Corporate Patron sponsor of the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund!

[catwoman69y2k@meow.social]

@Blender I cannot support this decision in any way. Accepting money from Anthropic is quite loaded.... and part of that load is the TNT you are going to toss on the community fostered around growth for Blender

Many artists and creatives have a general negative stance on AI (especially re: generative AI). Many of these artists have been exploited or had thier work training AI without thier consent. To accept Anthropic's blood money directly takes a crap on the entire creative community.

.... and all of that us aside from the environmental damage, and the lives that this will cost. You taking money from AI companies is an endorsement of Fascism and Environmental Destruction Machines

[be@floss.social]

@Blender This is heartbreaking. I hope a fork of Blender takes off because the project clearly isn't in responsible hands.

[accela@libretooth.gr]

@Blender Read the f room and cancel the sponsorship.
Microsoft and Facebook are not enough warmonger sponsors for you?

[unkx@icosahedron.website]

@rapsneezy2 @Blender you can find some useful email addresses at https://fund.blender.org/contact/ where you can probably send those questions. If you get a reply, share it.

[shammers@mastodon.coffee]

@Blender Hey. This fucking sucks.

[gbdc@mamot.fr]

@Blender

Doesn't matter, only souls are free.

"Blender belongs to us." Legion

[bachus@mastodon.social]

@Blender Give the money back you fucking traitors

[dannotdaniel@hellions.cloud]

@miss_rodent @Blender well said

do better, Blender

[teknomagic@todon.eu]

@Blender look, the problem is not the tone.

[mindiell@mamot.fr]

@Blender adios

[phf@dmv.community]

@Blender Well I guess you walked right into that huge pile of with open eyes and with every intention to actually flop down on your belly and roll around in it while it's still warm and steamy. Enjoy!

[angeles@mastorol.es]

@Blender I am surprised to see that a beloved tool by artists is accepting money from a plagiarism-as-a-service company, which is hurting that community so much. This an impressive way to alienate your users and art-loving donors.
I'll avoid using anything coming by an Anthropic booster, which is what Blender is becoming by having its logo on their page. It seems I'll need to look for an alternative software which respects their community

[valpackett@social.treehouse.systems]

@Blender <everybody disliked that>

[darkwolf@hear-me.social]

@Blender Oh god! They got Blender too! NOOOOOO! You bastards! *falls to the ground crying*

[starlily@mastodon.social]

@Blender Boo!

[dannotdaniel@hellions.cloud]

@ratking @Blender this

[robertguetzkow@infosec.exchange]

@Blender I understand that funding an open source project like Blender is a challenge but you do have choice who you want to associate with. This decision is more than disappointing. I have supported Blender for years through contributions to the development fund and with my work on the bug tracker a couple years back. It has been a shining example for an open source project that I have recommended to everyone. This crosses a red line for me and I will be stopping my contribution to the development fund. I hope you take the community feedback to heart, reverse the decision, and establish a better policy that considers ethical aspects about who you're taking money from.

[bucachowchow@mstdn.party]

@Blender well now I know never to use Blender for anything. Thanks for the heads up!

[lordtaku@mastodon.social]

@Blender you should be ashamed.
Of course I uninstalled your software.

[thisisfroggie@hachyderm.io]

@Blender regardless of what your funding policy might say, accepting funding from such an infamous company that is so widely hated specifically by your user base is not a good idea.

And honestly I also find it short-sighted, given the massive bubble and constant bleed of money these companies have. Gaining long term unpopularity for what I believe will likely be short term funding seems like a poor strategy to take.

I think everyone would have been much happier if the headline was "Blender rejects funding from Anthropic", even better if it was followed by another headline saying "Blender drafts new AI policy prohibiting the use of genAI for its development process".