# Ton Roosendaal Dutch software developer and entrepreneur, best known as the original creator of [[Blender]] and the founder and chairman of the Blender Foundation. ## Background - Founded the Dutch animation studio **NeoGeo** in 1989, which grew into one of the largest 3D animation houses in the Netherlands - Started developing Blender in-house at NeoGeo in **1994** as an internal tool - Founded **Not a Number Technologies (NaN)** in 1998 to commercialize Blender as a free + paid product - After NaN went bankrupt in 2002, ran the **"Free Blender" crowdfunding campaign** that raised €100,000 from the community - Released Blender's source code under the GPL and founded the **Blender Foundation** to steward the project - Continues to lead Blender development and strategy from the Blender Institute in Amsterdam ## Why he matters - One of the earliest and most successful examples of crowdfunding to liberate proprietary software into open-source - Built Blender from a niche internal tool into a globally-used 3D suite competing with commercial offerings (Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D) - Established the Blender Development Fund, demonstrating a sustainable model for community-supported open-source development of complex creative software - His "Open Movie" projects (Elephants Dream, Big Buck Bunny, Sintel, etc.) doubled as Blender stress-tests and proof points ## Quotes <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/quote AND [[Ton Roosendaal]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Books <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/book AND [[Ton Roosendaal]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Related - [[Blender]] ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton_Roosendaal - https://www.blender.org/about/foundation/