<< There is so much more that is wrong and could be fixed >>
Of course what can "legal" often bears very little, to sometimes NO
relation to what can be considered "ethical"
On 03/05/14 17:09, Raffaele Fragapane wrote:
People often take the whole antitrust thing a bit too far.
Antitrust laws, contrary to popular belief, don't prohibit de-facto
monopolies in any way other than those emerging maliciously or
aggressively. They are intended to try and avoid them, of course, but
there is nothing illegal to a monopoly emerging naturally as long as
it doesn't get exploited, once in place, to further itself in an
unfair and uncompetitive manner.
If you have a monopoly on something because you're the only provider
of such thing that's perfectly legal. It's oligopoly through
conspiracy (cross company agreements on price fixing in example)
that's severely punished, and monopoly through conspiracy or
aggressive exploitation of an existing monopolistic or
quasi-monopolistic capacity that are prohibited.
AD is also not considered a monopoly since Houdini, Modo, C4D, LW, and
various other hanger-ons are all available, and AD generally doesn't
coerce or litigate much through M&E, almost not at all compared to any
other tech industry.
Lastly, to those saying the acquisition of Softimage should have been
stalled or blocked by antitrust, Soft had been gutted by Avid and put
on a fire sale and handled very dubiously by a couple entirely too
career focused people inside it. AD did absolutely nothing illegal or
dodgy buying it. They would have had had they performed an aggressive
take over of sorts and concurrently done something like slashing
prices or offering trade-ins at a loss against other platforms,
effectively making a move to try and sweep the market of competitors,
but they did none of it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not fond of current or past events, but the
whole monopoly and antitrust discussions are honestly best left out of
it. There is so much more that is wrong and could be fixed before
people contemplate class actions and antitrust appeals that are so
incredibly unlikely to go anywhere other than to brush the pocket
lining of a handful of lawyers.
On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Paul Griswold
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Well, as I posted over on CGTalk, I don't think killing Softimage
was a real business decision. If M&E account for only 7% of
ADSK's revenue, and Softimage is one of the smallest components of
that revenue, it's insignificant. But, executives need to pound
their chests like gorillas and proclaim to the shareholders &
board that they're trimming the fat, etc., etc. If it was truly a
business decision, they could have cut a lot more than just
Softimage to make an impact on the bottom line. This was all for
show IMHO.
Realistically, they could cancel all of their M&E products if
they're 7% of the revenue. They own enough patents & intellectual
property that they could essentially hold the industry hostage and
never develop another product. Again Joe Alter comes to mind.
Why develop anything when you can sit back and force people to
pay licensing fees year after year?
Hopefully enough noise is made to start stirring up some
anti-trust claims. Autodesk is clearly behaving as a monopoly at
this point.
-Paul
ᐧ
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Emilio Hernandez
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Well we all still think that putting Softimage to rest is a
big mistake.
Motion Builder also has not major improvements. So we know
how all will end.
"We will continue to support and develop..."
-------------------------------------------------------
Emilio Hernández VFX & 3D animation.
2014-03-05 15:02 GMT-06:00 Jordi Bares <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
If they kill any of those the only one I think would be a
mistake would be Motion Builder… it has great potential if
they decide to actually develop it… it has been in limbo
mode like Softimage for years now and killing the Mac
version was truly annoying.
3DSMax… well… the architecture is so old and messy (have
you tried developing for Max?) I wonder how are they going
to sustain it…
With regards with the users… they may offer the same great
deal we are receiving.. (irony)
arhghh
Jordi Bares
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
On 5 Mar 2014, at 19:45, Emilio Hernandez
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
More reasons to stay with softimage
El mar 5, 2014 1:42 PM, "Gustavo Eggert Boehs"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> escribió:
Yes, but what they might do (are doing imho) is just
keeping updates as irrelevant as possible for
animation, not to encourage new users to pick it up
with that in mind.
Em quarta-feira, 5 de março de 2014, Steven Caron
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> escreveu:
i agree with the first two, just 3dsmax has too
much installed user base. i know we are mad and
we are making a stink about it... but if they
axed max?! autodesk might have to consider extra
security...
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 11:06 AM, Jordi Bares
<[email protected]> wrote:
The writing is on the wall. This is my take.
1 - Mudbox is next as Zbrush has truly wiped
the market.
2 - Morion Builder next as they implement
some tech in maya.
3 - 3DMax goes next.
Anyone want to bet?
--
Gustavo E Boehs
Dpto. de Expressão Gráfica | Universidade Federal de
Santa Catarina | http://www.gustavoeb.com.br/
--
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship
it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
