There is a mention about Blender on SlashDot Titled :

The State of Open Source 3D Modeling

ok...this is the Bryce forum...did you miss?..;) s'ok, I've used it, some.

Lol, I think Analog is trying to convert some of the brycers...........

As an aside, I've tried some of the other packages mentioned in the slash dot rant and none of them touch blender from a user perspective, I've never ventured into the code, I'm scared I'll get sucked in and never come out again....

I've never used Blender but the Article talked about how it was becoming a leader as far as a Modeling Package.

blender is a great free app, didnt I say so a couple of years ago?? :P

ysvry, the blender evangelist ;)

I've never written any code for blender, but it wouldn't surprise me if the code base were a bit of a mess.  Then again, it woudn't surprise me if the same were true for Max or Maya: it's something that happens to programs that have been around a while, particularly when they've changed hands.  I've wanted to recode things I've been working on from scratch because of the mess, but with something very feature heavy it frequently isn't worth it because the next release will be missing features, something that isn't acceptable to your end-users most of the time, especially if it's a commercial product.  Actually, I think they have done a bit of that with Blender in the past few years, I remember a few things when I first picked it up being very limited with promises that they'd be back soon and better than ever---and they are!