Blender isn’t free as you think – and it can't evolve without your suppor☠️

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Many people believe that Blender is completely free, but the truth is, it’s not. Blender is open-source, which doesn’t mean it costs nothing, but rather that someone else is covering the cost for you.

Blender’s development requires ongoing funding, as there’s a team continuously working to improve it and release major updates, as we’ve seen in recent versions. However, recently, the percentage of financial supporters has been decreasing, which is concerning.

If this trend continues, Blender won’t be able to evolve further. It may slow down or some important features we’ve been waiting for might get delayed.

If you’re using Blender, you’re benefiting from a lot of hard work being put into it every day. Contributing is not a heavy burden; even a small contribution can make a big difference. The future of Blender depends on the community’s awareness of its importance.

Support Blender – because it can’t evolve without those who believe in its value.
:warning: Why Supporting Blender Is Crucial:
.Just because it’s free doesn’t mean we should neglect supporting it – on the contrary: since we don’t pay for a subscription, we should at least help out in some small way.

.Blender isn’t owned by a big corporation, but rather an independent foundation, which means its existence and progress depend directly on the support of users and the community.

.Thousands of artists and developers use it, but it gets only a small percentage of financial support compared to its size and reach.

Blender needs more, not less. If you want to see faster improvements, more features, and long-term stability, supporting it is the way forward.

Don’t wait until it slows down or stops to appreciate its value – contribute, even if it’s just a little, now.

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Point taken, I will increase my monthly contribution!

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Contributing can take many forms, some offer their time and do bug-reports,upload example files for devs to figure out what is wrong.
some do tutorials or write helpful things in the forum or other areas.
some upload stellar tutorials for free.
Thats some ways of contributing and supporting without directly exchanging money.

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Blender is free but life on earth is not, the team needs to survive from money as other peoples who work in their domain. No money, no surviving, to much dense and too dependent of it… We have inventing this bad system if only free can be more freely to everyone and accept in general, all are winning for sure.
This bad system is virtual and often illusion for us but what do you want, we are human by an erroneous behavior ?

Sorry to be direct… I hope for you understanding. Peace.

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For now they’ll get money from me through blender supporting add-on purchases.

Will probably pickup monthly contribution again when economics get better.

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Totally agree this is one way to support Blender, but honestly, financial support is the top priority. People really need to understand how important donations are, especially with the recent drop in support from companies and organizations, which is kinda disappointing.

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That’s great! But support doesn’t always have to be big. Even $5 a month for Blender can make a real difference or just whenever you can, based on your situation. The amount doesn’t matter as much as the act of supporting itself. If just 2% of Blender users gave that small amount monthly, Blender could be way better and improve massively in just a few years. Sadly, many ignore it simply because they don’t really care.

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I used to contribute to the Blender Foundation monthly. I stopped when Eevee Next released, because I find Eevee Next unusable, so I’m still on 4.1. I have no motivation to support future development, I’m already 4 versions behind current development. I would hazard a guess there are more people like me than you’d think- if you were to look at the timeline of Eevee Next vs individual user contributions dropping off, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a correlation

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Why are you upset with the new Eevee? What’s wrong with it? It doesn’t lack anything; you can still do everything you could before, it’s just an improved version؟

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I’ve answered that at length elsewhere and don’t care to do it again, you’re welcome to look at the Eevee Next threads. I am just wanting to add a perspective- if you’re looking for a reason why individual donations have dropped off recently, that may be a place to start looking

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Lets talk about improvements in curve editing area. Where they are? They didnt happened because of what exactly? Lack of financial? Okay, i will pretend what i believe in that for now.
Current BF year income is about 2.93m (data for 2024). And the speed of improvements and development in curve area is - zero. Literally a zero.
So about which development speed improvements you are talking about? Eevee? I dont use it and dont intherested in improvements in this area at all. Same for cycles.

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Alright, I think the topic isn’t that important. I was just surprised because I didn’t see any changes other than new features being added but everyone has their own preferences. What matters here is that donating isn’t about which version you like more or which feature is more exciting. It’s about the responsibility of using the software. If you use Blender, then you’re responsible for helping it grow and improve. Not liking a specific feature doesn’t mean you shouldn’t contribute if you want to. It’s about keeping the development going. Maybe version 4.1 is enough for all your needs just like others helped build the version you love, you can help build a version that fits someone else. It’s all about pushing forward. In the end, it’s your choice whether to contribute or not. No one is more responsible for your decisions than you. And of course, thank you for supporting Blender in the past.

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So, what do you think? Do you really believe that all the development in recent years in Blender has only been about Eevee? Don’t forget that the income is relatively low and not enough to cover development needs in every area. Eevee hasn’t even received major updates for a while what it just got is a feature the community had been requesting for years: ray tracing in Eevee. For example, Vulkan is now in its final stages of development, and there’s ongoing work to improve stability. There are also long-term projects that have been in the works for years. You should know that Blender doesn’t have more than 50 people working on it, including those who work in the Blender Studio as artists. That’s a very small number of developers. If they could just reach 100 full-time staff working only on Blender, there would be huge improvements across the board. Don’t forget the big improvements in sculpting, and there are many other things too. But we shouldn’t complain without understanding that the company needs many things to stay alive before even focusing on development. The money they earn each year isn’t spent entirely on development many things consume a big portion of the income. Donate if you want to, and wait for the future, and ask for your needs on the Blender forums they might be worked on at any time

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Im afraid no. Theres was also some recources and money spended on VSE and 2d drawing stuff as example. How this is connected to 3d DCC? I have no idea. How such things is even take a priority in the situation where curves are in the simpliest and basic stage and lack of every basic core functionality, and snapping still doesnt have a lot of things? I have no idea.

Yeah, and believe in better tomorrow. Sounds like something from a crurch or sect.
How about i will just wait until the guys who in charge of development vector will think about which vector they pick currently, what was a result of this decision, and if they dont happy about it - they change it. Sound good for me.

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I strongly agree with you on this matter, it’s something that always annoys me. The strangest thing, and I always wonder about these things, is how Blender leaves more important things and focuses on developing such things, especially since the company’s income is low. It’s frustrating, but I think I’ve understood their way of thinking. They’re aiming to make Blender the all-in-one artistic program. You can find everything you need inside Blender to finish your project without leaving it. It’s a brilliant and innovative idea, but the problem lies in the company’s low income annually, because this diversity in software requires huge budgets to develop it to the best. That’s why I’m looking forward to the day Blender gets massive support from some company. Maybe 20 or 30 million dollars in annual revenue would be incredible to make Blender the best among all and take it to the next stage in development. Despite Blender’s strength and quality, it still lacks a lot of things that have been in competing software for 12 years or more. Hahaha, it’s really frustrating, but just support as much as you can if you want, because we don’t know what may happen in the future. I don’t blame the development idea, especially since Blender doesn’t even make 4 million a year. This number compared to the competitors is like a needle in a haystack. The last income for a company like Maxon alone exceeded 60 million a year. Imagine that! It’s discouraging, but let’s not be negative because we don’t know what the future holds for us

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Actually - not really. We can take the past into account and see whats happened there, which bring some logic and “ground” to any possible predictions because in the past we at least have some facts, while in the future we have nothing to really speaks about. And what we have in the past? Money spended to VSE and stuff like that?

Idea like what if BF will gain 5, 10, 15m revenue will automatically change everything may look legit and reasonable. Like if you dont happy with our chicken soup because it doesnt have enougth flavour - bring us some money and we will use more meat, right? Thats sound pretty logical and reasonable for me, meat is not free.
But i dont believe in this. At all. You may say what i dont know whats inside the head of developers, and cant predict the future. And i would say what i guess i actually can based on 2 factors:

  1. What was happened in the past
  2. Official survey which they post before latest BCON.
    In the moment where literally a tons of improvements may and should be done in core functionality - they bring some new stuff! NURBS modeling? People already have Plasticity for this.
    No improvements and recap of unwrapping, snapping system, modeling tools which is kind of okay but still may take improvements.
    Wheres improvements of overlay system? Why we need any shenanigans with material editor to simply observe alpha channel in vertex painting?
    They already clearly declare they possible area of their intherests in development vector. And zero of those idea is about fixing old problems in improve core functionality.
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Blender dont dying at all. Year revenue from 2022 to 2024 was actually groving. But yes, some folks in youtube make a clickbait titles and pretending what blender is in serious financial troubles.
But whats actually happening is that BF clearly not really happy about amount of funding. Different question is what they actually trying to do to fix this and for me currently answer is - nothing.

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blender never die :skull:

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I agree with almost everything you said, but I do have a few comments. They’re currently working on improving UV unwrapping, and they’re also addressing many of the missing features in Blender. I’ve been following all the projects they announced for development, and there’s a lot going on especially with the Geometry Nodes system. I know there are still many forgotten areas, but going back to what we talked about at the beginning: for me, it’s purely a matter of funding. Do you think they haven’t improved anything related to your interests over the past three years?https://projects.blender.org/

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I think every software suffers fluctuation in support.

Based on individual needs or expectation.

This is completely expected.

The situation with Blender is not likely due to any particular feature overall. Or development dissatisfaction overall.

There are industry factors and economic factors.

Modo for example. Folded. Dev issues yes. But in a stronger economy and not in the middle of an industry-wide crisis, it could have probably survived.

We have just come off an artificial boom in the animation industry.

Disney pulled the plug on animated series.

My thinking is that they must have assumed that subscribers would rise in number it did not - in my opinion - because the market was saturated. Too many choices. Too many streaming services and series.

But the result was massive layoffs at Pixar

In the last year in my city a major studio (that was doing outsource work) folded.

Some of the ex-employees came to work for me!

I believe that the situation is bigger than Blender.

That’s my opinion.

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