This is a strange subject for me, in that in ten years of playing with 3D art I think I have used less than ten freebies, so I am not a heavy user. I very rarely link to other sites either and when I do it is only with the aim of helping someone who had a question, as I don't use freebies I am unlikely to point to any. As such I have no axe to grind and it should mean I am not the slightest bit interested in the thread, but I am. The reason I am is because, during threads on the Prime debacle I realised how lucky I was to have spendable income for my hobby each month and for some, the $3.50 products and freebies were the only way a lot of users obtained any new content. That makes it a community issue and I therefore I am interested.

LPR001 has stated that the intent is to put a post clarifying the situation but needs time to make sure it is right. After all that has been said about inappropriate responses it seems totally unfair not to give that time. It is clear however that linking to freebies is a particular issue and maybe a compromise can be found. It appears that there is some concern that Renderosity would lose business which I understand but I am not sure how real that concern is. Lots of the people using freebies do so because the cannot afford content so they are not really going to be spending here anyway. Some artist use nothing but freebies because they have no choice. There are others that use freebies and do buy content but if they are reading the link here they are at Renderosity well, getting someone into your site must be the first aim for a Internet company.

There has been a lot of anger and negativity here, and rightly so, but let me just try and explain why this is the case. Sometime ago someone who was a regular contributor to the forums basically said they would be quiet for a while because the computer used for 3D art was broken and they could not afford another computer. That person used only freebies for the same reason that they could not afford and new computer but gave back to the community by creating freebies. Members here offered to donate computer parts, motherboards, processors, graphic cards. Most for just the cost of shipment, some even offered to cover the cost shipment as well. Not only does this show the community in a positive light, it also shows how important freebies are to them and the wider community and why they get upset if they are impacted negatively.

I know the rule will be clarified, if the team can also find away to protect access to the freebies that is acceptable to the membership I think it would be a big step in the right direction.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.