Does Blender make any money? Are the developers compensated?<p>I've always had a kind of conflicting perspective, as a developer myself, I enjoy the vibrant exchange of information and source which is open and often free and even "gratis". It has helped me grow and learn, it empowers me to be more productive as I can leverage a lot of existing code. That said, it also often worries me that the culture isn't willing to pay for a lot of these, since being a developer is also my profession. If we get users used to not paying for software, and developers willing to work for free, does it devalue the job of developer?<p>For example, I often wonder, if there was only proprietary software, would developer salaries be even higher?<p>Would there be more devs who are small businesses, one to 3 man teams, working on software like grep, 7zip, calendars, todos, calculators, etc. ?<p>As it seems, open source, especially the licenses which have the side effect of being mostly "gratis" forces the market into offering a service or product which isn't the software itself. Which is why a lot of devs can't make a living of being a small business, we need to be employed by bigger companies who offer collateral products or services.