Am 08.09.2011 14:06, schrieb Raffaella Traniello: > Today the Lightworks team made an announcement in Amsterdam. It is also in > the website: > http://www.lightworksbeta.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=122&Itemid=263
> All the announcement it is worth to be read because it tells about > the company philosophy. Ciao Raffaella! thanks for the hands-up! Indeed, this long and detailed announcement is really worth reading. IMHO this clarifies a lot of the remaining questions. This is not Open Source, not even remotely. It is lacking all the crucial elements and the spirit of open source. This is a company exploring new marketing schemes and channels, which, as such, is fine. Part of their strategy seems to be relying on the so called "open core" pattern, which is quite en vogue lately with vendors of professionally oriented software. Here, an application framework, kernel, micro kernel, architecture backbone or something similar is released under an Open Source license (preferably one of Apache or BSD type, which allows to incorporate it into commercial offerings). But for any really professional use of this software in the respective business area, you'll need some additional, crucial components, plug-ins or support facilities. And, most importantly, you need support and training, to pick up the necessary skills to be able to "parametrise" and use that software in an commercial setting with the typical tight timelines, huge budgets and high risks. While, initially, building up such a core is an major undertaking and investment, the further maintenance and evolution of the core typically turns out to be problematic within an commercially oriented environment: Efforts directed towards the core and application foundation are often perceived as "dead investment". Developers and engineers are constantly pressed by the marketing department to focus their efforts towards user visible and revenue generating features. Thus, the foundation and backbone of all the generated revenue quickly becomes subject to rot and decay. The "open core" pattern helps to mitigate that self-destructive tendency: - now, maintenance of the core can be justified as an marketing expense - it helps increasing the visibility of the product ecosystem and widens the market for the additional (non-free) offerings. - ideally, some volunteers help monitoring and improving the sanity of the core, thus freeing up resources within the company to be focussed towards the immediately revenue generating elements. That's a nice "Win-Win-Win" situation If you carefully read that announcement from EditShare, all the necessary ingredients are present. There is an free offering, but several crucial elements for working with any of today's professional media formats (even AVCHD) are confined to the non-free offering. There is a product management, and strategical decisions are done behind closed doors. The basic support is provided by the "community" itself, while the commercial support will be sold by a price tag one order of magnitude above the price of the basic subscription. There are hardware based offerings in the usual price range for professional gear. The "community" is kept closely coupled to a site operated and controlled by the company, including an App store. Moreover, great effort is put into smooth integration with "Flow Projects", i.e. the free offering is an entry ticket into an integrated industrial solution. And, last but not least, there is an "educational" offering to grow the future users of Lightworks "...to make Lightworks accessible to those in education, as these members will be future Lightworks champions" "The Community, which will also be populated by EditShare employees, will be the nexus for the rapidly growing number of professional users" Please understand me right: none of the above is objectionable. It is valid behaviour of an entity operating commercially and oriented towards revenue. Just -- right here we're talking within the context of *real* Open Source projects. And it is foreseeable, that Lightworks will try to be precieved as "OpenSource", and thus we can expect Cinelerra, Lumiera, Open Movie Editor, Kdenlive, PiTiVi, gstreamer, mlt, gmerlin,.... but also projects like Blender to be compared with Lightworks. Honestly, we should reject and defeat such an comparison, because it would be the classical comparison of apples and oranges. Another interesting question in this context is, if these new business patterns where fertilised by the OpenSource movement? Personally I think that's only partially true. For sure, OpenSource is now an *accepted* alternative to closed and proprietary organisation of the development process. But we shouldn't forget that in these areas where "open core" now appears as an viable solution, beforehand there was a phase of merciless and destructive competition within an basically limited market. Just consider what it means when an editing solution, (or any comparable professionally oriented product) formerly priced around 10k-100k, first gets offered as semiprofessional version about $1000, and then one decade later you'd get something roughly comparable for an annual subscription of $50. This is a nice recipe for destroying your own source of revenue for a short-hand advantage over your competitors. Well, putting it that way is not entirely just, because none of these actors behaves as they do based on conscientious and freely made choice. Rather, it seems that it's something happening on a larger scale at several places within our western societies. Which certainly has its bright side and its dark side. Hermann Voßeler (aka "Ichthyo") _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list [email protected] https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
