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Ton got back to me with the answers to your questions. I hope you'll find this interview as interesting as I have. Thanks to everyone who posted a question - this interview couldn't have worked without your input. And thanks to Ton for taking the time to answer them.

1. -efbie-: What do you drink to stay awake - tea, coffee, cola, Redbull, beer, etc?

Ton: Only in mornings coffee, then I switch to healthy fruit juice / mineral water combos. I can't drink beer & code at same time, unfortunately!

2. ch & SamAdam: As a child/teenager what did you want to do/be when you grew up?

Ton: As little child I wanted to be The Minister Of Foreign Affairs! Later on that switched to become "inventor". I've always loved to create, and make up things myself.

3. Fligh %: Could you please clear up the Suzanne mystery for us once and for all?

Ton: In January/February 2002 it was, for the people within NaN, already quite clear the company couldn't survive and would close the doors in March. Nevertheless, they found the energy for doing at least one more release, 2.25. As a sort-of easter egg, a last personal tag, the artists and developers decided to add a Monkey primitive. It was created by Willem-Paul van Overbruggen, who also named it Suzanne, after the monkey in Kevin Smith's Mallrats movie.

4. -efbie-: Now that blender has been open sourced for a while, what did you expected to happen that hasn't and what has surprised you the most about releasing Blender to the open source community?

Ton: Uhm. A difficult one. Back then the only target, and fight, was about rescuing the source code. Once released it was quite unclear to me what the direction would be of development, or who would pick things up, and for what.

The biggest surprise was of course the funding campaign went so blazing fast. For me the second big surprise was that it would even enable myself to work with substantial time on the code again. Re-discovered how much fun that is!

What didn't really happen was substantial (development) interest from companies. That's changing slowly now though. We've wiped out efficiently the 'bad name' from the past, now it's just the future again that counts.

5. JP:N9: Instead of the usual question like - What are we going to get from Ton?, I'd like to hear the opposite - What does Ton wish the community would do?

Ton: Start business! Found animation studios, make commercial graphics and movies, find ways to supply professional services with Blender. There's so many opportunities with Blender, especially in education & training, or in book publishing, but also in software development support and/or customizing (for example using Python).

Further, I think "we" as community are doing really fine. It's also not a single community anymore, which is very good. Everyone has noticed how Blender has integrated in other websites (like CGTalk) or magazines (3D World). We don't have to be "special" as separate community anymore, but can proudly take part in the worldwide CG movement and industry.

6. Dittohead: We all know that people have their preference in computing platforms and that, while each OS has it's pros & cons, they all run Blender very well, but can you give us a brief overview of what have been your main desktop platforms since the beginning of NeoGeo through to the present day? And what where the reasons for changing platforms [ie: cost, functionality, etc] ?

Ton: I've started with CG on an Amiga 500, back in 1986 or so. When NeoGeo started in '89 we moved to Amiga 2000's, with accellarator boards. It quickly became apparant that for real 3D work we should switch to another platform, with SGI back then having the absolute hottest workstations. From '91 to '98 we only used SGI, learning to love unix and C development on workstation level (which is main reason for Blender being portable). Within NeoGeo we had exactly 1 PC, bought to be able to run our PlayStation development kit.

When NaN started in '98 I still used SGI as main workstation, only switching to PC for work on the ports (BeOS, Linux, FreeBSD) or on a DEC Alpha (64 bits!). Most of the work for the Windows port I didn't do myself (thanks Marc & Daniel!). In 2000, work for the 2.0 release, I still used SGI only. After that, by the end of 2000 I didn't do development work anymore, and used a regular windows PC on my desktop for the daily mails & other stuff.

That situation lasted until I got back to the code again. I already had a special interest in checking out OSX, which is unix too, and had the G4 we used in NaN at home. Since end of 2002 that's my main platform, and something I've grown really fond of. It's the closest you get get nowadays to resemble the wonderful SGI era. :)

In fall last year I replaced it with a dual 2.0 Ghz G5. Great machine!

7. reed: Could you give us a brief summary of the future income model for the Blender Foundation - will it always be donation supported, and always focused on technical development, or would it be a good idea, for example, to invest in the marketing of Blender in the commercial market, or to use The Blender Foundation as a base for Blender training/consulting to business?

Ton: My aim still is to restrict the BF organization to the absolute minimum. Only doing the activities to survive financially and do what's really necessary because no-one else will do easily. Every business opportunity with Blender I prefer to hand over to someone else. The BF then can restrict to remain 'idealistic' and for general public benefit.

I know big OS projects like Mozilla or OpenOffice do have internal development organized (offices, paid jobs). Want to talk with them once on how this works...and if that's a satisfying model. For Blender, I think it would be best when we can get into close relationship with Blender artists who founded animation/graphics companies, and look with them how to structure development more efficiently.

Same it could work for education/training and consultancy. The BF can create facilities for it (educational material, certification), but should leave actual bizz to the trainers and consultants themselves.

BTW; our main income, since 2002, is the e-shop, book sales. I know that's partially running OK because people 'donate' that way. We also get government and EU subsidy. E-shop and subsidies make up to 99% of our income. (Shouldn't forget to mention internet provider XS4all, who's sponsoring us with free internet).

8. Fweeb: By your evaluation, which parts of the Blender codebase need the most work... and do we have the right kinds and numbers of people to get that work done?

Ton: I've recently sent a list for 'todo' to the developers list. It's easier to define which part of the codebase is in actual support, which is maybe 20% or 30% right now. We need loads and loads more people to get into coding, which is getting harder with time too...the current team has efficiently found & claimed all the more 'easy' jobs already. :)

To be able to efficiently coordinate a larger developers team, work has to continue on restructuring code for individuals or teams to work individually but still together. That's the main bottleneck...such restructuring is just a lot of work, and can only be done when you've been coding in Blender for a long time.

On the current hotlist for recode are still: 1) the animation system (armatures, actions, nla) and 2) the low level internal event system (hotkeys, mouse, windows, python...).

9. harkyman: Ton, different large for-profit companies have taken open source projects under their wing (IBM and Linux, for example). Do you think there is any chance of or value in pursuing such a relationship with one of the big or middle-sized players in the video or film production world? They would hire you and the other current paid staff, making Blender their main in-house production tool, adding their own staff and programmers to enhance it toward their needs, while keeping it open source and releasing their enhancements back to the community. Would this sort of arrangement be satisfying to you? How likely do you find this sort of scenario?

Ton: I think this topic was covered in previous replies already...So yes, I really think such a scenario is worth pursuing. I don't know whether it's wise to tie a relationship with a single company though... but this would all depend on their strategy & opinions and how they like to contribute. For example, if they're all former 3Dstudio users, and want Blender to become a clone of that program, they won't likely be a good partner. On the other hand, if the company has hired the top 10 of the Blender artists out there, that would make quite a difference. :)

10. Tommy Helgevold: Blender is getting big, so big in fact that companies all over the world are taking it seriously and many are using Blender today. What will the Blender Foundation do to ensure that Blender stays with the people and doesn't get into trouble with patent-laws and lawsuit from competing software?

Ton: I'm on several mailinglists from organizations who keep track of issues open source will have (or already has) with patents. This is an incredible complex topic...and it has hardly jurispudence (past legal experience) to know for open source what's OK and what not.

I can't be a specialist in this area, and will need to wait for strategy analysis and advise from organizations like FSF or FFII. On the past three Blender conferences we had sessions about this as well, and we have a small network of experts - including lawyers - who can help, if needed.

Parts of the protection we can do is involved with publishing as much as possible about how Blender works, about the inventions we did ourselves. Our public CVS logs, and wiki design docs are part of that as well.

Further I'm not too worried...we should trust on our creativity to cope with such situations. :)