Smart move by the new owner, anything else would have looked out of touch
I kind of expected this. The company didn’t choose to be dicks about it in the first place, and it’s not like Benchy was even a commercial product to begin with. It was cutesy branding that only had a no-derivatives license because the original author was concerned about preserving its utility as a benchmark. But md5 will already do that particular trick if it’s really necessary.
The new owner gained nothing by keeping the more stringent license, and had more to gain in goodwill by releasing it to the public domain.
I’ve been doing prints for probably 10+ years now and have yet to make one of these. Cute as it is I never quite got why that became the defacto standard test.
From NTI’s article:
“In January 2025, rumors surfaced that remixes of 3DBenchy were being removed from Printables due to the enforcement of the original license. However, NTI did not initiate this action. Prusa Research, the company behind Printables, later confirmed that a third-party report - not NTI - prompted the enforcement. NTI clarified it had not sought to remove downloads or derivatives of the model and had taken no legal action in this regard.”
So you‘re saying all the panic was for nothing? Shocking.
I don’t understand, are you bemoaning that the company in question who owns benchy is ending things amicably?
They changed the license on benchy, which is the thing that they needed to do to end the whole fiasco. I saw plenty of discussion and the internet is really good at inflaming passions. I wouldn’t classify what I saw as panic, but I think concern and confusion was rampant.
