Charles Wardlaw wrote:

According to the Maya documentation, there is a check-box that allows you to disable the execution of "script nodes" when opening the file. This would indeed be a "security measure" available and there has been no uproar on it that I've heard of.

See my earlier email on HOW Python is used in these applications as compared to Blender. Maya indeed uses Python in it's expressions(with the explicit capability of turning them off on open) like Blender does. The other "heavy hitter" applications do not. Their use of Python is in the construction of plugins from script - not in the embedding of Python in expressions used in rigs.

joe wrote:

Because Blender is a free modelling, animation, rendering application made available to all people wanting to get their hands dirty in 3D graphics. It is not just production studios that use it, but tens of thousands of people that wish they could be in graphics production. Some of them are working realistically towards that goal (training themselves and putting together better & more complex scenes/animations) and some are just playing at the shallow end of the pool playing with rigs and scripts they download online (alot like the Renderosity crowd of Poser users). Overall though, a fair proportion of these users (that significantly outnumber professional users) will have no concept if what a production environment IS, let alone any security implications therein.

Provided Blender continues to get more popular (and I don't see any reason why not, I've got pro artists hanging out for the "easier to use Blender 2.5"); this means more & more casual users. As this casual user base grows, it becomes a more inviting target for malware authors.