A press release from the Blender Foundation reports that two web sites have appeared selling re-branded versions of Blender. Allegedly in violation of copyright, these sites, 3DMagix and IllusionMage, intentionally hide the origins of the software, change or remove credits and licensing and apparently even suggest the software on offer is a cracked version of Autodesk 3ds Max.

Artwork on the two sites, traced by the Moviestorm artists forum, appears to have been appropriated from various other computer graphics sources and is also without accreditation.

As the press release points out, re-branding and re-distributing is a key right protected by the terms of the GPL, but only if the origins of the software are clearly stated, all credits are preserved and the software is represented as published under the terms of the GPL. Ton Roosendaal, Chairman of the Blender Foundation says there is little the foundation can do other than publicise the scam.

Blender is a free open source 3D, cross-platform content creation suite, available under the GNU General Public License. It has been used to create several animated movies that are available for free download. The latest stable version of Blender is version 2.49b, available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and Irix from the Blender Foundation web site.

See also:

Blender 2.56 beta released - Update, a report from The H.

(trk)