4 ms·

Blender is as far as I can tell one the best run and marketed Open Source projects out there. They seem to have a great way to pay for development. They are hav

by zaphar 6y ago

Blender is as far as I can tell one the best run and marketed Open Source projects out there. They seem to have a great way to pay for development. They are have a lot of industry invested in their success. They have a great focus on the end power user.

matsemann 6y ago
They got $1.2M from Epics megagrant last year, and has lots of people and companies donating. They are slightly above the goal of funding 20 full time employees. I'm happy that an open source software have been so successful. It's come very far since when I first used it, version 2.42 I think. Shoutout to those donating (and how to contribute): https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/
- freedomben 6y ago
  Someday when I can afford to pause taking a paycheck for a while, I am going to figure out how to reproduce this sort of model for numerous other applications. At least, that's my dream.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Do it for messaging! Make what WhatsApp was: - independent - financially sound - user friendly (ux) - respecting users (privacy) Add in what Telegram provides today: - bots - sign in - payments In addition: do tie yourself to the mast somehow so you can't give in to the siren song of Facebook or anyone else.
  - danudey 6y ago
    Just make sure that millions of people use the application, that it's a niche application that no one else makes a competing version of at the same price point, and that giant corporations give you millions of dollars to keep making it. Boom, success.
  - prox 6y ago
    Godot is slowly but surely moving in the footsteps of Blender. What you need is to craft your app and gather a loyal crowd who see a future in it. People skills are paramount, because here is where tons of open source projects fail to inspire. Set patreon like goals and hand off side projects to like minded devs. Blender also had its yearly feature reels and projects that helped its way to the limelight.
    - zaphar 6y ago
      The open movie projects are a large reason for Blenders success. It moved the focus from "Deliver developers pet feature" to "What do we need if we want to produce this kind of a film short." It put the focus on Blender as a tool for delivering actual film instead of various disconnected features. Roadmap focus is one the harder things for a creative OSS tool to get right.
- mstade 6y ago
  I started using blender around the 1.6x mark I think, back in the 90s. It was the only 3D software I could afford (you could unlock features with a c-key back in those days, I still don't know what c-key means) that would also run on IRIX. I had an SGI o2 back in those days and no clue about how to use any of it. Blender was difficult to learn, but it was a lot of fun and thankfully the community was extremely helpful with tutorials and what not. When NaN (the company that developed Blender) went belly up in the early 00's I like many others had absolutely zero confidence that Ton and gang would be able to raise the $100k to buy out the IP from the venture capitalists who'd invested in NaN, only to then give it away for free and open source to boot. It sounded absolutely mad, and I'm overjoyed that Ton and gang managed to prove doubters like myself wrong. Here's to hopefully many more years of success!
  - coolspot 6y ago
    > …it was designed to allow those who paid, faster access to new features. For whatever reason, the C-key was dropped, and eventually replaced by the requirement to purchase a Publisher license. https://blenderartists.org/t/what-is-the-c-key/297959/2 https://blenderartists.org/t/what-is-the-c-key/297959/2
    - mstade 6y ago
      Right, I know what the c-key did but I can't recall ever learning why it was called a c-key. What does the C stand for?
      - coolspot 6y ago
        I would guess “commercial” key, like a commercial license for a software.
ur-whale 6y ago
It's also one of the most impressive technically, up there IMO with the likes of gcc and linux. The amount of non-trivial tech built into it is staggering, and - most impressive, at least to me - the feature bloat has been really well managed, first from a usability perspective, but more importantly, from a performance perspective: blender remains, for many things, the fastest thing there is out there. If you want to convince yourself of that fact, try to load a rigged 1M poly scene stored in native blender format, and try to do the same thing with the Mayas and other 3DS maxes of this world.

by zaphar 6y ago

matsemann 6y ago

They got $1.2M from Epics megagrant last year, and has lots of people and companies donating. They are slightly above the goal of funding 20 full time employees. I'm happy that an open source software have been so successful. It's come very far since when I first used it, version 2.42 I think. Shoutout to those donating (and how to contribute): https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/

freedomben 6y ago
Someday when I can afford to pause taking a paycheck for a while, I am going to figure out how to reproduce this sort of model for numerous other applications. At least, that's my dream.
- eitland 6y ago
  Do it for messaging! Make what WhatsApp was: - independent - financially sound - user friendly (ux) - respecting users (privacy) Add in what Telegram provides today: - bots - sign in - payments In addition: do tie yourself to the mast somehow so you can't give in to the siren song of Facebook or anyone else.
- danudey 6y ago
  Just make sure that millions of people use the application, that it's a niche application that no one else makes a competing version of at the same price point, and that giant corporations give you millions of dollars to keep making it. Boom, success.
- prox 6y ago
  Godot is slowly but surely moving in the footsteps of Blender. What you need is to craft your app and gather a loyal crowd who see a future in it. People skills are paramount, because here is where tons of open source projects fail to inspire. Set patreon like goals and hand off side projects to like minded devs. Blender also had its yearly feature reels and projects that helped its way to the limelight.
  - zaphar 6y ago
    The open movie projects are a large reason for Blenders success. It moved the focus from "Deliver developers pet feature" to "What do we need if we want to produce this kind of a film short." It put the focus on Blender as a tool for delivering actual film instead of various disconnected features. Roadmap focus is one the harder things for a creative OSS tool to get right.
mstade 6y ago
I started using blender around the 1.6x mark I think, back in the 90s. It was the only 3D software I could afford (you could unlock features with a c-key back in those days, I still don't know what c-key means) that would also run on IRIX. I had an SGI o2 back in those days and no clue about how to use any of it. Blender was difficult to learn, but it was a lot of fun and thankfully the community was extremely helpful with tutorials and what not. When NaN (the company that developed Blender) went belly up in the early 00's I like many others had absolutely zero confidence that Ton and gang would be able to raise the $100k to buy out the IP from the venture capitalists who'd invested in NaN, only to then give it away for free and open source to boot. It sounded absolutely mad, and I'm overjoyed that Ton and gang managed to prove doubters like myself wrong. Here's to hopefully many more years of success!
- coolspot 6y ago
  > …it was designed to allow those who paid, faster access to new features. For whatever reason, the C-key was dropped, and eventually replaced by the requirement to purchase a Publisher license. https://blenderartists.org/t/what-is-the-c-key/297959/2 https://blenderartists.org/t/what-is-the-c-key/297959/2
  - mstade 6y ago
    Right, I know what the c-key did but I can't recall ever learning why it was called a c-key. What does the C stand for?
    - coolspot 6y ago
      I would guess “commercial” key, like a commercial license for a software.

ur-whale 6y ago

It's also one of the most impressive technically, up there IMO with the likes of gcc and linux. The amount of non-trivial tech built into it is staggering, and - most impressive, at least to me - the feature bloat has been really well managed, first from a usability perspective, but more importantly, from a performance perspective: blender remains, for many things, the fastest thing there is out there. If you want to convince yourself of that fact, try to load a rigged 1M poly scene stored in native blender format, and try to do the same thing with the Mayas and other 3DS maxes of this world.