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Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

At the very least it needs a better plan than "don't let it die".

An exception to what you're saying is Blender by the way, the early (open source) history is a bit sketchy beyond the €100,000 they raised to get the rights (in 2002, well before Kickstarter "crowdfunding"), but I always had the impression what they did right was focus on funding for full-time devs right from the start.

Blender in general is a great open source success story probably not told often enough, probably because 3D is something most of us never really do. It's probably worth examining what they did right in some more detail.

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I've always felt like a big part of Blender was having an interface that's awesome for power-users, but that's unusable without training. Then have a foundation that offers said training (some free, some paid), and from that money pay development, outreach and showcases (Blender Open Movies).

It's a somewhat unique (and likely unintentional) model that worked because the competition was very expensive, but it has also prevents Blender from being more than a niche product.

I used some Blender back in the day, over 10 years ago. At the time, I didn't find it too hard to learn and use, but I don't know how much it changed since. Of course it takes time, but I'm not sure if it's harder than similar 3D modelling tools? I also tried some 3D max and Lightroom in those days and they weren't exactly easy to use either. I mean, these are tools aimed at 3D artists (professional or amateur) and very much expert tools never designed to be used by "the average Joe".

That changed with Blender 2.80, which was an incredibly successful achievement. I'd say the interface is one of the most beautiful and pleasant I've ever used for a pro tool. It really ticks every usability box and it looks damn good too. That's not by chance that after 2.80 Blender has been getting more and more momentum. The amount of features that are packed into each point release would constitute a major release in other paid suites. So, yeah, the Blender future is bright and I wish more opensource software managed to replicate their success. I know Krita is following in their footsteps, and also successfully.

Perhaps a Patreon-style funding for Servo could work? Something similar to what the guy behind Serenity OS managed.

UI that's incomprehensible even to the people of closely related professions is more or less the norm for 3D-modelling software. Blender is not even the worst, there are lots of pretty expensive commercial editors out there that are worse (take a look at ZBrush for example).

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