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!
