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People in Softimage basically beg for Autodesk to buy it. ICE system is implemented and gave it a new life but AVID gets into serious financial trouble and needs to sell it to get capital to survive, since small studios and common people PC’s and the NLE video editor software start to get very powerful and turnkey systems and linear video editors start to loose the cost benefit usability race.
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Softimage XSI developers slowly start to open the application, but years were lost. XSI development started under Microsoft so have a structural problem: it is considered a giant DLL and API is not opened like Maya and 3DsMax In meantime Avid buys it but Softimage now XSI is in backfoot. The move to Windows out of SGi’s and the like take a long time so the now Softimage XSI arrives late and Maya takes over Hollywood. If i can make a story from my limited POV.ĩ0’s Softimage 3D top of the line in Hollywwod, Microsoft owns it. I also don’t think it was Autodesk that killed with intention of doing it from begining of the buy but Softimage developers like Marc Petit that moved on to other endeavours were a giant help in killing it. Why spent money on it, to kill it again, that would be the equivalent of burning money only to piss on the grave of a competitor that NEVER was a threat to the company and its business interests. Same applies to Lightwave, only that Lightwave is already dead. Why invest millions into it when all they wanted was killing it? I don’t agree with Autodesk and I hate them for killing off XSI, but I am not convinced for a second they did it intentionally (with evil intentions). It’s kinda funny that you bring me in a situation where I actually have to defend Autodesk, since I am not a fan of the company, but this is to me more a case of: don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence (or bad economic circumstances, I might add). The did 6 new releases while it was under the brand-name of Autodesk.ĭoes this look like a brutal hostile takeover or more like an attempt to actually sell a product and then kinda failing with it? Avid bought it for whatever reasons they had and then they did nothing with it - same as Microsoft, to them it was just a prestige object they used for marketing, while letting it slip without doing anything useful with it.Īutodesk bought it in 2008 and it took them 6 years to kill it? It never really recovered from that blow because it needed lots of development to get on the same level as Maya (when it comes to VFX and its role in the movie industry). It was the fact that Avid discontinued the development that made it possible for Maya to took massive amounts of market segment shares from it. Do You know that Microsoft owned it at one time? And then Avid? Softimage was already in a bad shape before Autodesk bought it. You’re not listening to arguments and I think you don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t mean to be writing article length responses here. EDIT: I also apologize for my inability to keep my responses short. I just don’t have any faith it’s a viable option, or would be enough to save the software if by some miracle it did happen. Software dies all the time even when it could have been saved by being open sourced.Īnd to be clear, none of this comes from opposition to LW being open-sourced. Keeping the program alive is not of sufficient value to the company or it’s investors unless someone on their end cares about keeping it alive and is willing to raise the money to do so. See, it’s not enough that keeping it closed source is of no value to them if the software is dead, they need to be convinced there is value in making it open source.
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LightWave doesn’t seem to have anyone in NewTek like Ton who is passionate about saving the software, so there’s no one to convince NewTek investors that releasing the software open-source is more profitable to them than letting it die. And that was even though though Blender’s parent company was dead, so keeping the software closed source would’ve had no financial value to the investors anyway. He WAS the boss who wanted to give up the software and share the source code, but in order to do so, they had investors who needed to be bought out. Blender wasn’t being bought out from Ton. The last option, couldn’t the board, or boss (whoever runs the business) of NewTek just “give up” the software and upload the source code for free to GitHub or something for anyone interested in it, why would it matter if they would not earn any more money from the software anyway?