Next to Linux, is Blender the most well known and used software that is open source?
Just wondering, as I found myself thinking of anything else that is open source and which is as well known?
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Libre office has an estimated user base of 200 million so I would say not.
Oh and Firefox etc.
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Yeah, I think Firefox takes the cake for the average person 
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Yeah…didn’t think of Browsers, but they absolutely qualify.
Nonetheless, Blender’s got to be up there…no?
Blender is certainly the most known open source 3D software.
Many people still don’t care about 3D at all.
Firefox and VLC are probably known as free software, before being known as libre software.
Blender probably entered that category with recent hardware revolutions, like 3D printing and head mounted display.
It became a benchmark for GPUs and CPUs.
So, in last decades, it became known beyond the niches of illustrators, animators and game creators.
It probably became more well known than The Gimp, that was the reference for libre graphics in early 2000s. Now, there is Krita.
And now, when people think about graphic stuff, they are immediately questioning themselves : << why not doing it in 3D ? >>.
But trying Blender will always be an active process beyond pure necessity. That is not a fundamental piece of software to run an OS, to go on internet, to office automation, to play videos, sounds or games.
That is a software for art.
And many people are not interested in making art with a computer.
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Godot has also been making a lot of rounds lately and the games made with it are becoming more popular (both 2D and 3D). The foundation has been profiting off of the continual reports of how Unity and Unreal have a penchant for bugs, for crashes, for heaviness, for insanely high file sizes, and for shattering projects on upgrades. The technology (in the commercial solutions) is still the best available, but it requires the best PC parts money can buy as well.
They might get more traffic now because of how Unity’s recent release of Megacities (the company’s premier demo for DOTS) received what appeared to be a major downgrade compared to how it looked on the brochure.
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Or maybe even Chrome… ( or any based on…)
…on the other hand… this is not about well known… by he average person
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Chrome is not open source (Chromium is).
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It’s the only one right? I mean Blender is the only open source DCC as far as I know. There are 3D paint apps, and game engines, but there aren’t any other open source CG apps like Blender out there, right?
Ten years ago, there were modest alternatives like OpenFX or K-3D to create 3D animations.
But their developers, with a smaller community support and less resources lost interest, while Blender was becoming more and more customizable.
Now, Blender alternatives are forks.
There are libre software 3D communities around design, CAD software, photogrammetry.
Sweet Home 3D, OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, CloudCompare, Meshroom
For polygonal 3d modeling, wings3d is not dead.
Small apps like Magicavoxel may be more appropriate to a kind of graphical work.
But yes. Blender development smashed most of hopes of alternative general platform, doing anything in 3D, by delivering new features, at a fast pace, encouraging developers to contribute instead of compete.
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You got me…
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I believe a high percentage of coding languages are open source which would push Blender down by quite a bit. In terms of userbase and general public awareness, blender might make the top 25.
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…most well known…
…most people don’t know Android is based on linux…
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I guess there are two ways to approach the question.
Asking people to specifically name open source software.
Asking people to name software in general and dissecting the data to find the open source ones among them.
Neither of these is particularly favourable for Blender.
To put it in perspective, there is a very large tech youtuber (3+ millions of subscribers), who didn’t realise until recently (about 2 years ago) that blender was an actual software, that people use to get work done. He thought it was a benchmark tool. He reviews tech hardware from the big three chip makers.
Programming languages may technically quality as software, but I do not think they should count for this thread because they are just an SDK instead of a tangible, GUI-driven application accessible to the average person.
I mean one could use POV-Ray as an example of FOSS in the 3D space existing near as long as commercial offerings, but it was largely just a text editor where you wrote a program that described a scene.
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