Interview with Ton Roosendaal
Blender, Coming of Age. 18 years of Blender open source projects
Ton Roosendaal will give a talk about Blender, Coming of Age. 18 years of Blender open source projects at FOSDEM 2020.
Q: Could you briefly introduce yourself?
I started writing 3d software in the 90s, on an SGI, a Unix workstation. It’s how Blender started and why it became so portable. After a flirt with the internet bubble, Blender became Free Software in 2002. I always liked it to combine creative and technical talents, a reason why I founded Blender Institute in 2007 to explore our ‘production driven development’ concept — making short film. This strategy has proven to work very well, with as a result the film/games industry massively adopting and supporting Blender. Aside of working as chief Blender coordinator, I’m preparing production of an animated feature film — entirely done with an open source production pipeline.
Q: What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?
Blender is going through a very interesting phase now: getting adopted by the industry brings in a whole new type of requirements and complexity. In my talk I will show how we got there, and what we do to handle the market demands.
Q: What do you hope to accomplish by giving this talk? What do you expect?
Not only Blender is doing great, the entire domain of computer graphics is experiencing a massive adoption of free and open source software. It’s a success story that’s worth sharing on this 20th FOSDEM.
I also hope to renew and expand our network in the FOSS world. We can use some help and counseling, especially on foundation organization level.
Q: Have you enjoyed previous FOSDEM editions?
It’s my first time, can you believe that? :)
Creative Commons License
This interview is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Belgium License.