Ton Roosendaal

Ton Roosendaal ( born March 20, 1960 in the Netherlands ) is a Dutch software developer, chairman of Blender Foundation and chief developer of the free 3D modeling program Blender. Furthermore, he is a producer of Elephants Dream, Big Buck Bunny, Sintel and Tears of Steel, four computer-generated short films that were created primarily with free software.

In the 1980s he worked as a freelance designer in the field of industrial design. Even then he was very interested in technology and earned his first Amiga 1985, for the first graphics, video and 3D graphics software were available. In 1988 he co-founded a company called NeoGeo which video graphics, video, animation, and effects with an emphasis on animation offered. To this end, for reasons of cost custom software for internal use has been developed.

1995 Blender was born, it was the third generation of internal tools and ran exclusively on Silicon Graphics systems.

Roosendaal decided in 1998 to sell Blender and founded the company NaN ( Not a Number Technologies). In the same year was also the first time ported a version for Linux and also available as a freeware. Blender was therefore quickly became popular. 2002 NaN went bankrupt like many other dotcoms ( dot-com bubble ). Roosendaal organized a meeting with all investors and could encourage them to release the source code under the GNU General Public License ( GPL). Two conditions provided the investors, however: First, it should not be possible that another company picks up the source code and markets from a private commercial program, and secondly a sum of 100,000 euros should be paid. The first point has been sufficiently met by the GPL. The amount of money should be achieved in the form of donations, so he founded on July 18, 2002, the Blender Foundation. In just seven weeks, the amount claimed on September 7 was reached. This strategy of fundraising is also called " Street Performer Protocol ".

In May 2005, Roosendaal announced the project Orange, from which on 24 March 2006, the film Elephants Dream emerged. In this project, as well as the subsequent Peach Project, he was a producer. Also, the film project of the Blender Foundation, durian, was produced by Ton Roosendaal. The premiere of the film took place at the Netherlands Film Festival on 27 September 2010.

In July 2009, Roosendaal received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of business and law from Leeds Metropolitan University in Leeds, England.