but still, they were open sourced about 1 year apart. I still think having a bigger user base is a good reason for the difference
It's come an absurdly long way since I first dabbled with it in the early 2000s, and has gone from a niche FOSS tool to something widely used in its field.
Nowadays, Blender is an example of masterful UX for a professional tool. Immediately responsive, information dense UI with keyboard shortcuts for absolutely everything. Actions are composable, like with vim: something like "ex5" will extrude five units on the x axis.