Looking Back on RetopoFlows Development
Jonathan Williamson looks back at the inception and initial development of RetopoFlow, and how it led to the creation of the Blender Market.
Wes Burke writes:Blender add-ons and even Blender itself exists with a story behind it. A story is what captivates us and motivates the team beyond exhaustion, funding and adversity when setting out to create something that didn’t exist.
Looking Back at Retopoflow Development gives insight to why Jonathan Williamson wanted to create the tool and how ultimately lead to the creation of the Blender Market.
Congrats!
I just wish the Blender trademark was better enforced and that “Blender Market” was tweaked a bit.
“Blender Market” implies that it is officially part of, or endorsed by Blender- The Authoritative Blender Market.
Is it?
I did just notice that it’s called: “BLENDER MARKET – A marketplace for the Blender community” and it’s using the https://cgcookiemarkets.com/ domain name. That’s a step in the right direction…
Perhaps “A Blender Marketplace by CGCookie” or “CGCookie Blender Marketplace” would work.
Please check out how this was handled in the Drupal community:
http://buytaert.net/drupal-trademark-policy-forthcoming
https://www.drupal.com/trademark
It levels the playing field for companies, by them all not using names that imply that they are official.
The closest we have now is: https://www.blender.org/about/logo/ which just covers the logo.
Thanks James!
Regarding the usage of “Blender”, this is something that we’re going to have to be continuously aware of to make sure there’s not any confusion; as will all Blender sites, what with more and more Blender businesses taking off.
As it is right now, I can see how the tagline, “A marketplace for the Blender community” might be perceived as an official affiliation or endorsement. I’ll discuss this with the team and Ton to consider options.
The name, Blender Market, on the other hand, I do not see a problem with. In my opinion having “Blender” in the name is much more of an association with the product, than an official capacity of any kind. If “Blender” were to be restricted in site names, then Blender Nation, Blender Guru, Blender Artists, Blender Diplom, and many others would all have to rename themselves. Now, with that said, if the Blender Foundation chose to restrict usage of the name, then we would do whatever needed to comply with the restrictions.
Honestly I just found out that Blender Market it’s not related with the Blender Foundation. I thought it was! And I thought that part of the profit was to help Blender development. I don’t think this is a big deal though..
Many vendors on the market do in fact contribute a percentage of their sales to the Blender Foundation.
@jonathan, maybe you can elaborate?
Yep, Bart is correct. Vendors can choose to donate a portion of each sale (up to 70% of the product price) to the Blender Development Fund.
At the beginning of each month we then donate a lump-sum directly to the Blender Foundation on the vendors behalf.
You can find all of the dev-fund products here: https://cgcookiemarkets.com/all-products/tag/dev-fund/ Or just look for the red heart next to their title.
The official Blender logo page may shed some light on this too:
https://www.blender.org/about/logo/
Thank you both for shedding some light on the subject. Cheers!