andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> On 3-4-2009 23:08, nemesis wrote:
> > andrel escreveu:
> >> On 3-4-2009 18:40, Darren New wrote:
> >>> Please, this is not a troll. It's a serious question that isn't meant
> >>> to imply the answer is "no."
> >>
> >> 'No' would be a strange answer to your question anyway.
> >>
> >>> What are some other cool open-source projects that didn't take their
> >>> design from existing products?  I.e., ones where the open source
> >>> software was the first thing to do things that way?
> >>
> >> POV and Blender?
> >
> > Blender started life as an in-house, proprietary tool.  When the company
> > was closing doors, they realized the tool was quite complete and good
> > enough perhaps not for going commercial, but at least to serve as the
> > basis for an open-source project.  And so they realized an online
> > auction and when a certain ammount was gathered, they did release the
> > source under the GPL.
> >
> > The community literally bought a former proprietary product and
> > open-sourced it.  Even Stallman gone hurrah. :)
>
> What I remember is that it started as a research project (at which stage
> it may have been available for others, so that is why I though it might
> qualify as an answer), was then tried commercially and when that did not
> work converted to open source by the main developer.
> The reason that it did not work may be related to being forced to do
> (more than) full time 'maintenance' and 'support' because people were
> paying.
> That danger is why our software is available to fellow researchers for
> free. We would like to do some research ourselves too.

First time I hear of such research history.  Are you sure you are talking about
Blender?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History

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