Greetings I have posted here before about 'Blender', a powerful 3D modeling and animation software developed by Ton Roosendaal in Netherlands. Blender had selected Python for its scripting platform, and all sorts of good things were emerging from the combination.. Then the early this summer some really bad news struck - Blender was dead. Sudden victim of the cruel bankruptcy and legal problems of NaN its holding company. The very lively Blender community is mostly European, with strong in Holland and France. And they were shocked but motivated by the news. Even though Blender software had been freely downloadable, it was never open. Perhaps that had something to do with NaN's business problems, but probably not since they were a service company selling 3D animation, not a software vendor. Blender was an evolving by-product of tools the NaN design team used in-house. Then, as only you might expect from the enlightened and pragmatic Dutch, on Friday July 5 came some rare and surprising good news: "New future for Blender as Free Software! Today the shareholders of NaN Holding have reached an agreement on the outlines for a new future for Blender. In general it means that a non-profit organization (the Blender Foundation) will be enabled to execute its plans, including Blender development as an 'open source' or 'free software' project..." Two weeks later on July 18th, an online campaign started to raise the money to buy Blender's freedom so it can continue a new life as GPL openSource project. A month later a progress graph of donations was posted: http://www.blender3d.com/meter_report.html On week ago on Sept 7th, it was announced tada.. $100 [Euro] had been collected, enough to guarantee releasing Blender's source! The Open Blender project rolls forth. You can read more about it, and register for your membership participation if so inclined at: http://www.blender3d.com/ ./Jason ______________________________________________ Jason Cunliffe [NOMADICS: Director art+design] Tel/fax: +1 718 422-1078 jasonic@nomadics.org N 43:00.000' W 074:31.875' ALT:1144 ft 84 Henry Street #3C Brooklyn NY 11201 USA