 On July 18, 2002, Roosendaal started the ""Free Blender"" campaign, a crowdfunding precursor.The campaign aimed at open-sourcing Blender for a one-time payment of €100,000 (US$100,670 at the time), with the money being collected from the community.On September 7, 2002, it was announced that they had collected enough funds and would release the Blender source code.