It's really puzzling (but extremely welcome) that Blender continues to be such an open source success story. Seems rare for such complex pieces of software in a niche space to get that level of development. I wonder what the secret is.
replies(4):
They made tiers, made it simple and easy, and promoted it.
Before the fund really was pushed... they were getting about 5,000 USD per month to develop it... Now it is sitting at 215,000 USD per month.
More money = More developers. More Developers = Better product.
Yes it didnt happen overnight that increase, but it was slow and steady.
Before that, I'd say open sourcing the project is what really gave it a second wind.
If I remember a talk correctly by Ton Roosendaal, the company behind Blender development went bankrupt and development stopped for a while, as it was closed-source at that point. Eventually, he started a fundraiser to get funds to re-acquire Blender and open sourcing it (the goal being 100K EUR or something) which was successful and made Blender into the open source project we know today :)