I think even Ton admitted it in the BI and BF videos - the fact that BI is turning into a “studio”. That what was Ton dream anyway - Blender were just a tool for him to achieve that dream, not his dream itself. He keep saying someone need to start a support business. Its a business opportunity. To be the next billion dollar company like Red Hat, probably?
Maybe someone need to start a “Blender Development” and start taking donations (and probably away from BI and BF) with a tagline “This donation will be used to hire developers to work on features YOU wanted, forking Blender if required! Booyaah!”
Maybe Ton will see future donations for his future open movie will dwindle, because people are donating so that Blender will be improved so that THEY can make their OPEN OR CLOSED MOVIE! And not for Ton to hire screenwriters, graphic artist and whatever to create his own movie.
–edit–
I thought the fact that Gooseberry didn’t reached its target will teach Ton a lesson, but it seems it does not. At least in the talk Ton finally open to making closed movie funded by commercial entity.
People don’t care about your open movie, we donate so that you can improve the tools so that WE can make OUR movie.
You know, like how other software company use money from the software purchase.
—edit no 2–
To the OP, so I guess that is the other video I’m talking about. The one about BI and BF.
—edit no 3–
To be frank, I’ve been thinking about it a lot (but not lot enough) between forking, or starting a ‘ubuntu’ style company, but it keep being circular. to have a successful support business, the market have to be there. But the market is not there (not big enough) because Blender, as Ton said, was merely for Blender users (never to fulfill what the market need). So in the end, instead of spending money on starting a company, hiring blender developers and what not, start a donation drive ala Krita, I just throw the cash toward the foundry and LW. end of story.