[vishnu]

[...] if there's UNIX-like code that would contribute substantially to a closed source product, the BSD code is probably at least as good as the GNU code, if not better. Okay, dismounting my high-horse now...

Who cares about closed source products? 

You make a good point, but really the only reason I have my SGIs is to use Maya, Pro/ENGINEER, Shake, a bunch of Adobe stuff, which don't really have any analogs in the free software world. Is Blender good? Probably. Is it as good as Maya? There's really no comparison. I don't actually code on my SGIs anymore, I code on my Linux driver and ftp over to my SGIs and use MIPSPro (also not free software) to do the compilation. So on my daily driver (Linux) I don't have any closed source/commercial software, but on my SGIs, the only software I use is closed source commercial. Reverse evolution I guess...