This was when Ton Roosendaal and Frank van Beek decided to found a company called Not a Number (NaN) to further market and develop Blender.

The target of this was to create a free creation tool for interactive 3D (online) content, and commercial versions of the software for distribution and publishing.

[7] Due to low sales and the ongoing difficult economic climate, the NaN investors decided to shut down all operations in January/February 2002, signalling the end of Blender development.

In July 2002, NaN investors agreed on a plan to attempt to publish Blender under an open-source license using the Street Performer Protocol.

In the first two and a half years of open source development, it was especially this unique attribute of the Blender project that has proved to be difficult to organize and maintain.

[7] On 16 July 2009, Roosendaal was awarded an honorary doctorate in Technology at the Leeds Metropolitan University for his work on Blender.

[14] In April 2008 Project Peach, the open movie Big Buck Bunny, was completed in the Blender Institute.