There is big news on the #3DBenchy situation: it now appears the licensing issue is resolved.
What licensing issue? The venerable 3D print benchmark boat has been around for ten years now, and has always carried a specific open source license.
The license specified that no derivatives were to be produced. This was chosen by the designers of the #3DBenchy to ensure that it remained geometrically accurate, as its purpose was a benchmark. You can’t benchmark if there are bogus copies of the #3DBenchy that have different dimensions, or that’s how the thinking went at the time.
Nevertheless, the creative 3D print community took the iconic design and produced a wide range of artistic derivatives. These were clearly not for benchmarking purposes, but for entertainment, and no one enforced the no-derivatives licensing point.
Until earlier this year. At that time, someone complained to Printables about a #3DBenchy derivative, suggesting it was violating the license. It actually was violating the license, but up to that point, no one cared to enforce it.
However, Printables operates in the EU, where there are legal requirements to follow licensing stipulations, especially when aware of violations. Accordingly, Printables began taking down derivative works.
All of this was happening unbeknownst to the designers of the original #3DBenchy. But who were they?
The original design was produced by Daniel Norée and Paulo Kiefe at Creative Tools in Sweden, who sought a way to promote their sales of 3D printers by establishing a fun benchmark. Their strategy worked, but Creative Tools eventually moved away from 3D printing and was later acquired by NTI Group, a much larger corporation.
Initially, it was thought that NTI Group had enforced their licensing rights on Printables, but it turned out not to be the case.
Now we see a resolution to this design mess.
In an announcement from NTI Group, they say this:
“3DBenchy, a 3D model designed specifically for testing and benchmarking 3D printers, is now in the public domain. Originally released on April 9, 2015, by Creative Tools, the model has become a beloved icon of the 3D printing community. Following Creative Tools’ acquisition and merger into NTI in 2024, NTI has decided to release 3DBenchy to the world by making it public domain, marking its 10th anniversary with this significant gesture.”
The company has also transferred control of the website 3Dbenchy.com (yes, there really is such a thing; you should take a look at it) to Daniel Norée and Paulo Kiefe. However, there is one stipulation: that the #3DBenchy “remains publicly available to all.”
I wondered about the specific licensing change that took place, as this was not listed in the announcements. I took a look at the licensing on 3Dbenchy.com from earlier this year and found this:
“Feel free to modify #3DBenchy for personal use. Feel free to publish texts, images, and videos of your experimentation (these are your work, and you own them!). Please respect the above list items regarding not distributing modified STL files of #3DBenchy.”
Now the same passage reads:
“Feel free to modify #3DBenchy for any use. Feel free to publish texts, images, and videos of your experimentation (these are your work, and you own them!). Please consider attributing the origins of 3DBenchy by referring to 3DBenchy.com.”
The “any use” was bolded by 3Dbenchy.com, not me.
While we could always use the #3DBenchy model during this situation, we now know that all derivative models — and there are quite a few — will continue to be available.
I expect we’ll see a lot more derivative models appear in the next few weeks.
