Blender Foundation

I'm fully supporting the protests today against the SOPA bill that might get accepted in the USA. With Blender Foundation being established in the Netherlands, I would like to emphasize that similar ideas have either already been established or are being lobbied here and in other European countries.

If you know the abbreviations in the title; keep an eye at these organizations or bills, investigate it well and make up your mind. Your own country will have similar organizations claiming to stand up for rights of artists, but in fact serve the interests of copyright-trolls and wealthy corporations even more.

What's the digital world you want to live in? I don't know all answers, but for sure it shouldn't be the big corporations defining it alone. A wonderful American document begins with "We the people... ". Let's make that true in the 21st century as well.

Ton Roosendaal
Blender Foundation.

(Instead of blackening, i prefer to speak up today :)

The Blender E-store still is the main income source for Blender Foundation, allowing to organize projects in Blender Institute and to hire people for work on Blender (currently 3 developers and myself full-time).

Customers expect from a modern internet store more services than we provided until now though; especially doing faster and more often shipments. To achieve this, we need to expand our product catalog to get a bit higher volumes per shipment.

Per January 1st 2012 we now rent a second small office and storage in the south of Netherlands (Budel) where our shop manager Anja Vugts-Verstappen will be handling the orders, shipping and daily shop support.

Summarized, changes will be:

• Shipping at least 3 times per week (monday, wednesday, friday)
• More choice in shipping speed (courier, or free shipping, T.B.A.)
• Shop open for third party DVD training, we added BlenderCookie titles now.

http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/default_dvds.php

Publishers interested to resell via our e-store as well can contact me any time!

-Ton-
(ton at blender.org)