What does Blender do differently that makes it such a successful open source product?

It’s powerful and pleasant to use. Even the release marketing page is beautiful and well-made.

I like open source as much as the next guy, but outside of developer tools there is little that comes close to Blender in terms of utility and UX.

Is it funding? Specific individuals? Are there PMs and designers? Whatever it is, it’s working!

I think the dog fooding their own software through all the amazing movies the Blender Institute made plays a huge role.

Relying on individual donations from users helps a lot with blender being aligned to the interest of its actual users. There is not one or a few corporate sponsors controlling everything.

Plus the GPL license which protects the freedom of its users.

I think at the very least they've found those rare individuals who can both code well and manage well. There are countless open source project leaders who might be the most knowledgeable person in the world on that area but have no idea how to communicate and collaborate in an open-source setting, especially as the project gets popular and attracts people who're detrimental (not necessarily malicious) to the project's growth.

Yeah this is a really good question. I'd love to know more about that too. There's some good history on the website here [1].

The creator apparently was selling it as freemium software in 1998, and then the bubble burst and the corp shutdown in 2002. But the creator created a non-profit called the Blender Foundation, launched a Free Blender campaign [2] (the forum post is still up!) to raise money from its users and bought out the rights to the software from the investors.

[1] https://www.blender.org/about/history/

[2] https://blenderartists.org/t/free-blender-campaign-launched/...