On this, the eve of Flow taking home an Oscar, I want to note that Blender exists in its current form because after Ton Roosendaal spearheaded writing it, released it as freeware, had his company dissolve, tried developing it as shareware, had the company developing it go bankrupt, and built a non-profit foundation to crowd-source funding for it... Enough people stepped up to fund it that it still lives.
It's a hell of a testament to a software author---and a community's---insistence that in spite of market evidence to the contrary, the software is good and worthy of continued existence.
