Blender only became successful well after it was made open source.
As a commercial project it was a failure. It only became successful due to two decades of open-source development, and the willingness of its users to invest in it - even if only to stimulate the development of a competitor to expensive proprietary software.
Blender only became an even remotely viable option in 2011, after being open-source for 9 years. Its popularity only really started in 2019 after a massive UI rework made it actually nice to use. This and related changes led to Blender receiving a $1.2M grant in 2019, leading to other companies re-evaluating it and awarding even more grants.
If anything, compared to today's successes its initial proprietary development should be seen as nothing more than a historical curiosity.
As a commercial project it was a failure. It only became successful due to two decades of open-source development, and the willingness of its users to invest in it - even if only to stimulate the development of a competitor to expensive proprietary software.
Blender only became an even remotely viable option in 2011, after being open-source for 9 years. Its popularity only really started in 2019 after a massive UI rework made it actually nice to use. This and related changes led to Blender receiving a $1.2M grant in 2019, leading to other companies re-evaluating it and awarding even more grants.
If anything, compared to today's successes its initial proprietary development should be seen as nothing more than a historical curiosity.