7 HN users recommended this interview8 months2018–2025score 10.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Recommended as the best account of Blender's history and its user-focused approach as a free software success story.
A long interview by Blender Guru with Ton Roosendaal, creator of Blender. They cover Blender's origins, the move to open source, why Ton is not driven by money, Autodesk, and what sets Blender apart from other open source projects.
“I highly encourage to watch the whole interview” (HN, 2019)
Your last sentence reminded me of an interview with the Ton Rosendaal, the creator of Blender. He talks extensively about how Blender became OSS and not abandonware. I highly encourage to watch the whole interview (you need at least 5 mins to get used to his accent), but the important part starts around minute 14 [this video]
How Blender became open source rather than abandonware.
I reccomend watching this interview with him - at least the parts where he talks about money. It's incredibly refreshing to hear someone at the top of their game in the tech sphere say they're not interested in money except as a tool to help them create. [this video]
Ton Roosendaal says money is only a tool for creating.
The Blender story is quite an impressive one of iterative development. Ton Rosensaal very explicitly doesn't want technology for its own sake and wants to "get it out of the door", but does it all while keeping an eye on it being usable for creatives (now more than before, but the ground work was laid long ago, see everything being animatable) Great interview with Blender Guru: [this video]
Blender's iterative development focused on usability for creatives.
IIRC Ton Rosendaal, Blender's creator, still leads the project, but while listening very closely to its users and their pains and a very interesting approach to software development. The interview with BlenderGuru is great one: [this video] The last major redesign was started by a vision shared by the interviewer, who seems to be one of the many deeply invested artists. (This is all very much "IIRC", based on stuff I've peripherally heard or seen years ago)
Blender's user-driven approach to software development.
Ton is a legend and a personal hero of mine. He is a great innovator and an open-source superstar who disrupted the entire industry, traditionally dominated by big corporations. The entire Blender story is captivating - from modeler and raytracer prototypes on Amiga to the Internet bubble startup to the famous crowdfunding campaign to free Blender... It is a story that deserves a movie. For anyone interested in open-source history who is not familiar with the Blender story, I would highly recommend Ton's interview with Blender Guru, where he reflects on his journey - [this video]
Ton Roosendaal reflects on Blender's journey from Amiga to crowdfunding.
I‘m using blender every day and absolutely love it. the fact that it’s run by such a genuine and inspirational guy like Ton makes me like blender even more :) if you want to know more about him and his plan for Blender watch this interview [this video] or the tour of their new office (it’s really funny) [link]
Blender already has a solid and enthousiastic user base before the 2.7 UI update. Blender was also the forerunner in having a kickstarter-like scheme to raise enough money to make it opensource. There's an interesting interview between Ton Roosendaal and Blender Guru about the history. [this video] The Blender guys were also a lot less hostile towards people trying to make improvements to stuff like UX. One of the things that GIMP also desperately needs is a name change, while Blender is an odd choice it at least doesn't conjur up sexual images.
Blender's history, including the crowdfunded move to open source.
Ton Roosendaal (Blender creator) estimated in 2018 interview that 3D software market is very small, and pulled up Autodesk's (3DsMax/Maya, etc) business results from that time, which amounted to 25000 - 30000 yearly licenses. He also claimed that Maya has "maybe 20" developers behind with things being similar for other products. [this video] (jump to 1h mark)
Ton on the small 3D software market and Maya's tiny dev team.
> So let me ask ... when you're listening to podcasts, do you ever take anything away from them that is actionable? Do you take notes? Do you summarise? I can answer this a little from my perspective. There are three major inspirations for tech podcasts that I use personally. The first two: [link] and [link] are both in the format of "veterans talk to each other about their careers and the things they've learned". They always roll in the format of two old friends catching up, but in a guided way in terms of their life, experiences and learnings from along the way. These are the ones that I want to emulate, but with a focus on programming for enterprise, business and startups. I'm personally most excited in talking to what I think of very respectfully as "cogwheel" or "workhorse" developers. I think developers are vastly under-celebrated when compared to other creatives ... like some person who can cry on demand gets a tiny golden statue and applause ... but the person who re-writes 1500 lines of SQL into a one liner and reduces a week long job down to seconds DOESN'T?! You're telling me I have to go out and buy my OWN tiny little golden statue and play an applause loop on my cellphone? That's bullshit! At least that's where I want to start, I've seen some interviews in the last few days with people like Ton Roosendaal - the creator of blender - [this video] After I've developed the interview skills to talk to the people who genuinely make me feel a little like a programming fanboy
Firms like NVidia, AMD, Facebook, Amazon, Unity, Epic Mega Grants, Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, and Apple chucking money at Blender is a hell of a lot better for users and society and education and industry than the featureless monolith that is Autodesk chucking plaster at Ton Roosendaal. ;) [link] >... of public interest, we have to act in that sense. I can't simply say, "Oh, I'm going to support Autodesk from now on". And then, you can't. You can bring me to court and I will most certainly lose this. Plus, what people don't know maybe, but the Blender code is not owned by the Blender Foundation. [CRASH RUMBLE THUD] What??! That was Autodesk! [this video] >"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal interview. Interview with Ton Roosendaal, the man behind the open source 3D software Blender! 46:52: [Q: What do you think of Autodesk?] [this video] >A: They're my best friends! Yah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! >[...52:46] Nobody reads those licenses. Nobody. [And this one is quite bad, isn't it?] It's horrible. [Yeah.] They can visit you at home if you use Autodesk, and check your computer, what's on it. [That's a good quote.] >Some people ask me, hey Ton, if I use Blender, the art I make, is that my property, can I do whatever I like with it? Of course! That's open, the Free Software Foundation philosophy, right? We are making free software. Do whatever you do with the content. >Autodesk, on the other hand, they also have their educational versions. In the license it says that everything yo
Ton criticizes Autodesk licenses and champions free software.
> We should go back to the roots, forget about competing, focus on what's the best not for the end users but on what's fun for the FOSS developers, and bring back the hobby on open source projects. I prefer Blender's approach of heavily prioritizing users over developers [0]. It's been a huge success. [0] [this video]
Blender's approach of prioritizing users over developers.
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