[Edu-sig] Edu-Harvest 2002 => Blender Foundation

[Jason Cunliffe]

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