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A couple points...
Way back someone mentioned Shake for video editing. Shake is in no way a video editing tool. I'm not sure how you would even be able to edit video with shake. It's strictly a digital color grading, compositing, and painting tool. And it's $@#$@#$@#$@# good at that. I've read the Shake certification book and am profficient at it; I prefer it over combustion any day. It lacks particle effects, but hopefully we'll see it included in the next version. Oh, and to the person who mentioned running shake on linux... why? It costs twice as much as the mac version. Usually, you only run render-only copies of shake on linux farms.
As for the open-source vs. commercial debate. Currently, I find commercial software much more polished and powerful than the open-source counterparts such as Blender. I think as the projects grow, we'll start seeing better releases. For now, however, commercial products are better. Maya is still the king of 3D in the professional industry, and has yet to be dethroned. However, lightwave and 3ds max are starting to make their impact in the industry more and more. All three are great programs and have their advantages. While on the open-source topic, keep your eye on Jashaka ( sf.net/jashaka ). It's shake-type compositing tool that has some very talented developers working on it.
Personally, I have no objection if you use something besides 3ds max in the competition. We used some 3rd party plugins for 3ds max, but we never used another standalone 3d app.
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