With the success of blender.org projects, and publishing all the exciting Blender releases, we're now being challenged by third parties who like to ride the waves and do business with Blender.

There's nothing wrong with that. In its very nature, GNU GPL is about freedom, the freedom not only to use and modify the sources, but also to distribute and resell our releases under another brand name.

Recently we received several concerned emails and forum postings from people who were worried about Blender resellers using especially Ebay to sell Blender.

The company Luxuriousity resells via Ebay and their website all kinds of open source products under own name. For example Open Office is being sold as "Office Professional", and Blender is offered as "3D Studio Professional". Two brand names clearly hinting at other trademarked products we all know. You can also find, in disguise, products like GIMP, QCad and Audacity there.

Luxuriousity web pages intentionally hide that the products are distributions of GNU GPL licensed software, that the products include the source codes or are freely downloadable. Nor do they publicly credit and link to the original creators of the software.

Whilst the people who work hard on creating the software really can despise this attitude, it has to be very clearly stated this is in fact not violating the GNU GPL at all. For as long a third party offers the binaries and the sources, both with original copyright notices and and in compliance with the GNU GPL, it is legal. So if you really feel the need, just go ahead and sell a BombaLooza3D suite based on the contents copied from our download section!

However, whereas GPL implies this kind of freedom, it doesn't allow to deny or violate associated copyrights.

• Luxuriousity cannot claim they developed the software
• Luxuriousity cannot remove copyrights, not from the splash screen nor from the user interface nor from the source codes
• Luxuriousity cannot make claims their product was used to make Blender credited images or artwork. If you rebrand a product you have to go all the way and use your own artwork and publicity claims.
• Luxuriousity cannot use any artwork from blender websites without permission of the (c) owners.

Personally, I think we shouldn't bother too much with this little annoyance. It's in fact a compliment someone is doing so much his best to spread Blender and make a little bucks with it. What puzzles me most is that Luxuriousity didn't decide to do smarter business and choose the cooperative way. All Free Software projects benefit from free distribution, and there's no reason to be ashamed of it by hiding that with obscure brands and refusing to credit the makers. I fail to see the logic behind giving up the marketing advantage of crediting well known projects like Blender or OpenOffice.

If the person behind Luxuriousity doesn't want to self-damage his brand further, I really hope he will adjust his strategy and involve some ethics and common sense.

Ton Roosendaal

Chairman Blender Foundation

BTW1: I would like to thank the Free Software Foundation for advise and feedback on this issue. If someone has a clear evidence the Blender licence (GNU GPL) has been violated, the FSF will work with us to do whatever is legally possible to stop that.

BTW2: Artists who find their artwork being copied without permission should best first contact the violator. Typically this results in removing or proper crediting.

BTW3: Luxuriousity's customers can always claim their money back, they seem to be proud of refunding it!

BTW4: The web page selling Blender can still be found in Google's webcache here.