In this blog post, I endorse the Blender free and open source 3D creation suite for artists and applaud its organization, inviting you to support its development through the Development Fund.

The program

Blender is a cross-platform program for 3D graphics, and much more, available as free and open source software under the GNU General Public License. Its massive array of features makes it suitable for modelling, sculpting, animation, rigging, rendering, drawing, video editing, running simulations, scripting and more. Free form ads and offline by default, the software is designed to serve its users. The capabilities of Blender are demonstrated through the Open Movies and demo files from various artists, as well by the art its community produces.

Blender is managed as a community-driven project coordinated by the Blender Foundation. Development happens in the open and the community is encouraged to get involved, as hundreds of volunteers from around the world have.

The copyright to contributions to Blender is retained by contributors and copyleft secures the future of Blender as free and open source software.

The community of Blender users is highly diverse, ranging from amateurs to professionals, from 3D artists to 2D artists, from designers to programmers.

A golden example

Blender is a high-quality piece of software and has been managed remarkably well, as has the organization, for more than two decades.

Sadly, many organizations in the free software ecosystem lose focus over time, failing to the iron law of bureaucracy or becoming involved in unrelated, controversial and divisive political matters or are just dispersive and inefficient. The community is often riddled with inflammatory discourse and even straight-up discriminatory practices.

The Blender organization is a great example of how well an open source organization can and should be run. It has remained laser-focused on one program and its mission.

While many codes of conduct use loaded language, have been promoted by large corporations or, often, through hostile and highly questionable tactics, are strikingly ideological and have overall been harmful to the community, the Blender Code of Conduct is reasonable and to the point, inviting for polite disagreement and for an assumption of good intent. It encourages cooperation rather than trumping it on needless grounds.

With one exception, the Blender Foundation has consistently remained neutral in the face of unrelated political matters.

Blender is for artists and is made for Blender users, as opposed to attracting new ones or the needs of developers. The Blender Foundation runs in clear alignment with these principles.

Freedom to Create

The mission of the Blender organization is to get the world’s best 3D computer graphics technology in the hands of artists as free software. Blender’s tagline is “freedom to create”.

The freedom to create differs from creative freedom. It precedes it and implies fundamental rights for people to be enabled and empowered to express themselves as creative human beings.

The freedom to create is tightly intertwined with freedom of speech, a core and long-standing value of the free software and hacking community.

Software freedom supports freedom to create, allowing artists the freedom to deploy the software. Blender is free to use, for any purpose, forever.

Blender Open Movies

Blender Open Movies are films released by the Blender organization. All but one of them are released under free and open licences. Source files are not publicly available to all recipients. Instead, they can be accessed, under the same terms, by paying Blender Studio subscription (who may then distribute them if they so wish, as sharing is an act of love). Blender Open Movies showcase just what can be achieved through free software.

Through the Orange Open Movie Project, in 2006, the Blender Foundation released Elephants Dream, co-produced with Montevideo (part of the Netherlands Media Art Institute) and directed by Bassam Kurdali, as the first Open Movie.

The Blender Foundation declared no intention to grow or expand into a company or studio, as such a development would have conflicted with the public benefit goals, aiming instead at endorsing and supporting activities within educational institutes, universities and companies.

In 2007, following the success of Elephants Dream, Ton established the Blender Institute, comprising a permanent office and studio, with the express intention of generating open projects. As part of its output, the Blender Institute created a series of Open Movies in collaboration with artists.

Starting from 2014, the studio continued to release Open Movies as “Blender Cloud”. In 2017 it adopted the name “Blender Studio”. In 2020, the Blender Studio was finally established as a separate company, splitting from the Blender Institute.

The organization

The Blender organization comprises three legal entities under Ton’s leadership.

The Blender Foundation is a stichting not currently recognized as a charity. Blender trademarks are registered to the Blender Foundation

The Blender Institute is a besloten vennootschap (a private limited company) which acts formally as the working company of the Blender Foundation. Most activities of the Foundation are in fact being conducted by the Blender Institute.

The Blender Studio is a besloten vennootschap. It operates as a production company providing content under free and open licences, including Open Movies, assets, training materials and more, and is funded primarily by Blender Studio (previously “Blender Cloud”) subscriptions.

Copyright on works made by the corporations is transferred to the foundation by default. The three legal entities share the same headquarters in Amsterdam and operate in unison to further Blender’s mission.

Ton Roosendaal

Ton Roosendaal is a Dutch programmer and original author of Blender. He is the founder of the Blender organization and currently serves as chairman of the Blender Foundation and Blender CEO.

In 1989 Ton opened his own 3D animation studio, NeoGeo. As an in-house application for the studio, on the 2nd of January 1994, Ton wrote the first source files of Blender, from previously developed tools, including his raytracer Traces (still available for download), marking Blender’s official birthday.

Blender 1.0 was launched in 1995. When NeoGeo closed, Ton founded the Not a Number company focused on Blender with his partner Frank van Beek. NaN opened in 1998, distributing Blender under a freemium strategy. The company managed to attract investors, but eventually closed in 2002, halting Blender’s development. Ton decided to start the Blender Foundation, so as to make Blender open source. He launched the “Free Blender” crowdfunding campaign, raising enough money to regain Blender from its investors. The same year, Blender was released as free and open source software under the GPL.

Ton is still spearheading the Blender Foundation, along with the Blender Institute and the Blender Studio, which he later founded, to this day. The development of Blender has attracted hundreds of volunteers from around the world.

Founders play a special role in shaping a piece of software. While many have contributed to Blender, it is Ton Roosendaal who wrote a program worth contributing to.

There would be no GCC without Richard Stallman, no FFmpeg without Fabrice Bellard and no Blender without Ton.

Upcoming changes

It has been announced that, by the end of 2025, ownership of the Blender Institute, previously in Ton’s hands, would be transferred to the Foundation.

Ton is set to step down as chairman and Blender CEO per Public Domain Day 2026, a move which has been planned for years. His roles will be passed to COO Francesco Siddi, his longstanding “right hand”, currently the only other board member as secretary, who has already shortly held similar responsibilities.

The board of the Blender Foundation will be joined by new members, while Ton will move to an advisory role as part of a newly established supervisory board.

Ton’s last bow as chairman should be received with a round of applause for his work. I extend my gratitude to the amazing team and all who have worked thus far to make Blender what it is today. The new administration of the Blender Foundation has massive shoes to fill. I wish them the very best of luck.

Given the remarkable track record of the Blender organization, the best we can ask of the new leadership is for stability and continuity, preserving and reaffirming Blender’s values and principles as laid out throughout its history.

Development Fund

The main income model for the Blender Foundation and the Blender Institute is donations, using the Development Fund.

Downloading Blender costs nothing, but only thanks to those who make it possible. This Christmas, consider supporting the Blender Foundation, as I have.

In supporting the Blender Foundation, highlight the importance of stability, neutrality and continuing to uphold their principles, remarking the importance of Ton’s advisory role.

Blender’s focus must remain on artists, so that they may have a free 3D creation pipeline, while also remaining available for everyone else, and on usability first as opposed to learnability, keeping things consistent and fit with overall design.

Additional resources

• Blender Foundation announces new board and executive director by the Blender Foundation
• Elephants Dream by the Orange Open Movie Team
• Wing It! by Blender Studio
• (Re)defining Blender by Ton Roosendaal
• Blender is Free Software by Ton Roosendaal
• Blender Foundation Annual Report 2024 by the Blender Foundation
• Blender 5.0 Beginner Donut Tutorial by Andrew Price
• History by Blender
• Blender’s History by Blender
• Blender’s prehistory - Traces on Commodore Amiga (1987-1991) by Piotr Zgodziński
• Archive by the Blender Institute