Ton is a personal hero of mine. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a 3d animator because of Ton. I discovered Blender in the early 2000s as a kid. It was my first exposure to digital art tools because it was free. When Blender open sourced in 2002 it was a massive gift to kids around the world like me. (Ton was kind enough to reply to an email of mine at the time thanking him!)
Ton and Blender have brought so much value to the world by making world-class creation tools available to everyone. Blender is one of the most successful open source projects of all time -- going from an underdog project notorious for difficult to use UI to a polished, ubiquitous, industry shaping tool. And never losing sight of the art; it still brings a huge smile to my face when Blender ships another Open Movie. Nearly ~25 years later, thank you again Ton.
DoctorOW · 4m ago
> Ton is a personal hero of mine. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a 3d animator because of Ton. I discovered Blender in the early 2000s as a kid.
I could've written this comment, I swear to god. I'll add that Blender is my favorite FOSS project.
glimshe · 48m ago
Blender is more valuable to humanity than all cryptocurrencies put together.
wiz21c · 30m ago
He totally deserve some rest. Blender + the GPLization of Blender have been executed perfectly. We need more people like him.
MarsIronPI · 12m ago
I wish more non-free software could be made free and open-source when its creators go defunct or lose interest in it. Another good example that brings a smile to my face is Duelyst[1]. The company behind it went under so they published the code and assets under CC0.
His work has enabled so much creativity and he gets to give great software away for free, what a chad.
heyheyhouhou · 1h ago
He is such a great person and helped soo much fostering an amazing community. He will still be around and the people that will be leading Blender and its community are amazing also :)
7373737373 · 2h ago
o7
I wish more businesses followed his footsteps in making their products free and open source and run by nonprofits
groby_b · 23m ago
How much money are you personally giving to Blender, or other foundation-run projects?
Ton and Blender have brought so much value to the world by making world-class creation tools available to everyone. Blender is one of the most successful open source projects of all time -- going from an underdog project notorious for difficult to use UI to a polished, ubiquitous, industry shaping tool. And never losing sight of the art; it still brings a huge smile to my face when Blender ships another Open Movie. Nearly ~25 years later, thank you again Ton.
I could've written this comment, I swear to god. I'll add that Blender is my favorite FOSS project.
1: https://github.com/open-duelyst/duelyst
I wish more businesses followed his footsteps in making their products free and open source and run by nonprofits