Interview with Ton Roosendaal, the man behind Blender (2018) [video]

Ton is an incredible person and Blender truly would’ve died in a box had it not have been for his perseverance and focus. That’s not to say there haven’t been many many more people who’ve contributed massively to the success of Blender, but had it not been for Ton they wouldn’t have had anything to build on and improve.

I was very vocal against the fundraising to purchase and free the blender source code back in the day, and had very harsh criticism for Ton, saying things like Ton ran NaN into the ground, why should we trust him to deliver on freeing Blender etc. etc. It was a divisive time, and people in the community said stuff like if you don’t like it, leave – and I did. I remember one guy saying “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” :o)

I was very wrong in doubting Ton and the community, and I’m very happy to admit it. Blender is an amazing piece of software, and it’s wholly and completely free. It never would’ve been without Ton.

So Ton if your read this – thank you so very much for proving me (and many others) very wrong!

Discussed (a bit) at the time:

“Money doesn't interest me” – Creator of Blender talks about its future - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17989373 - Sept 2018 (1 comment)

“Money doesn't interest me” – Creator of Blender talks about its future - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16480431 - Feb 2018 (2 comments)

I occasionally come back to this interview because it's so beautiful. Blender is such a success story of a project putting a focus on practically improving its UX with code quality being one way of achieving that, but not the ultimate goal.

Really, really great interview...But being from 6 years ago, is there something similar and more recent, about the current state of the Blender ecosystem?

TIL that the creator is dutch, very cool (: