[peter_d_sherman]

Excerpt:

"Blender’s development fund currently brings in about 1,200,000 euros a year, which funds 20 full-time developers. That’s not the only source of funding. Blender has about 172 developers in the past year, and 550 over its entire existence, and 64 in the past month, same as LibreOffice. Looking at the last number, it means that there are anyway more volunteer committers in the Blender community than paid developers. Funded development hasn’t eaten the community.

Let’s hazard a guess: Blender has four times the installed base of AutoDesk Maya. This is pretty rough, of course, so ingest with salt.

My thoughts:

These are important non-software aspects of Blender which are critical for acceptance by new users, which is critical to maintain a healthy user base, which should in turn yield a well-community-supported codebase...

In other words, this makes Blender a safe choice in corporate environments where a choice may exist between it and commercial offerings, such as Autodesk's Maya...

[chrisseaton]

> about 1,200,000 euros a year, which funds 20 full-time developers

Wow not paying them a lot are they.

[andrepd]

I would definitely work for blender for 5k a month. That's a top 1% income bracket in many great countries in Europe.

[chrisseaton]

That’s $5k a month to pay all taxes and employee expenses... not $5k take home - you’ll get hardly any of it at the end!

[ClumsyPilot]

Even so, his point still stands. The upper range of developer salaries in Czech Republic, before taxes, is $3000 to $5000. The country is considered Central Europe.

If you go for Eastern Europe, Hungary/Poland/Ukraine, that's enough to afford the best people.

[andrepd]

Income tax (at some bracket) is a percent of income. What does it matter if it's "5k to cover taxes" lol, it's not like its a flat expense that 5k may or may not cover.

Even 3000€ or even 2500€ take home pay per month would let me live a very good life (for me) in a sunny, safe, beautiful place in Europe. All the while I'm working for a free software project, one which I'm a fan of (not working to make my boss rich, not inventing better ways to make people click on ads). What else could I possibly ask for.

[renke1]

60k Euros is not that bad. You can live comfortably with that in Europe.

[chrisseaton]

I think employing someone has about a 50% overhead, so it's really $30.

[cma]

I'd imagine they aren't paying any cut to recruiters. I guess that leaves real estate, equipment, contractor, and legal/accounting (assuming outsourced) overhead.

[newnewpdro]

If it's Europe my understanding is there's substantial expenses paid to employment security overhead, it's how they pay for things like the exceptionally good maternity leave and unemployment benefits type stuff.