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Trying To Lure Suckers, Company Resells Open Source Blender
sylphsama writes "A company named 'IllusionMage" deceptively resells a 3D open source animation package (Blender) and claims it as their own. The software, dubbed IllusionMage, portrays flagrant similarities with Blender, although outdated compared to the original. The website itself is a patchwork of sorts, using renders from different users and numerous other packages as a way to impress its visitors. Not only is that a breach of copyright, but they intentionally hide that the software is distributed under the GNU GPL license, rendering it free to use. The Blender Foundation itself has spoken out through its chairman Ton Roosendaal." I love that they promise "Free Updates For Life. All From the Thriving Open Source Community, This Software is Forever Improving."
At the bottom of the page it clearly says:
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I knew it wasn't Blender because the commercial said it was "easy".
Now this isn't to say that it's wrong to sell GPL software - even RMS and the GPL v3 licenses say that you can sell it for whatever you can get for it - but that anyone else is free to do the same with the copy you sell them, so the price quickly drops to zero.
They're doing the "sucker born every minute" thing.
What he's doing is completely legal.
His customers appear happy, and given that he's marketing to die-hard Windows & Mac users (no Linux version mentioned), the fee probably makes them feel more comfortable. It's a feature...
" Wow this software is incredible. I have owned Maya, 3DMax and PoserPro. I can tell you, this is by FAR, the easiest software to use."
Isaac Oneil - Marion, NC
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Same, nearly identical, treatment for flightprosim.com knock off of flightgear.org. Shame....
No, what they are doing is not legal. They are taking non-free images and using it on their own site while claiming it is their own. There's nothing wrong with someone taking Blender, remaking it, licensing it under the GPL and creating a website and selling it. But that isn't what these people are doing, they are trying to deceive others and not crediting the images they use to promote their product.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Ugh. No. The trailing dot is perfectly correct and it should be there. It's actually a hack that the trailing dot is implicitly assumed in domain names.
"It's a little-known fact, but fully-qualified (unambiguous) DNS domain names have a dot at the end."
http://www.dns-sd.org/TrailingDotsInDomainNames.html
His customers appear happy, and given that he's marketing to die-hard Windows & Mac users (no Linux version mentioned), the fee probably makes them feel more comfortable. It's a feature...
" Wow this software is incredible. I have owned Maya, 3DMax and PoserPro. I can tell you, this is by FAR, the easiest software to use."
Isaac Oneil - Marion, NC
He creates false testimonials (I reported him to one of the corporations he was using in a false testimonial - he had fabricated the individual and testimony.)
Seriously though, they did add notes to all of the images naming the source. Maybe they asked permission, and that was all the creators asked of them? I'd advise we hold off on the lynching until one of the artists comes out and complains.
No they did not ask permission. We specifically denied them to use of some of the images and of our videos (some are CC licensed and thus we have no control over, but many are not). However he has ignored most of the requests from the Blender Foundation.
...which has a grammatical error in it's explanation...
BZZZZT Game over, thanks for playing. ;-)
-=Maggie Leber=-
Any browser (or other DNS-using software) that does not accept a terminal period on a domain name is broken. The root of the DNS is ., and this domain could just as well be written as "news.slashdot.org.". In fact, using a terminal . may speed up access if anything because it prevents the use of any "search" statements in /etc/resolv.conf.
It's a legitimate stance that fraud is a worse crime than copyright infringement.
...which has a grammatical error in it's explanation...
BZZZZT Game over, thanks for playing. ;-)
The "apostrophe - s" there shows possession. If the explanation belonged to John, we would say "John's explanation". Here I was using the informal "it" to refer to the company or product, hence "it's explanation" as the explanation belonged to it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This part is awesome:
Your Dinky One-Time Investment Is Only $47!
(This is a special launch offer only, we're only opening this for the next 3 days only before the offer closes forever!)
Thats right. Your investment for the entire course is only $47 (this launch offer will closed anytime after February 26, 2011 )
Where February 26, 2011 is: // How many days to add to today // Add 10 days
days = 3;
d = new Date();
now = d.getTime();
d.setTime(now + days * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
document.getElementById("offerEnd1").innerHTML = formatDate(d);
function formatDate(d) {
var months = new Array("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December");
return months[d.getMonth()] + " " + d.getDate() + ", " + d.getFullYear();;
What you need to do is to send him a C&D and then a serious lawsuit. If you don't have funding then please announce that and we will provide. I now pledge 100 Euro on actual instigation of a court action against him for a specific GPL violation if you need it and provided that you demand appropriate damages (as with the BusyBox cases).
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();