“…and I want to announce that Blender has been bought by Autodesk”
Sorry I couldn’t resist. Feel free to delete the thred.
Just want to say thank you to Ton and all the other developer for making Blender what it is, and above all, what is not…
-Gian
the force is strong on the dark side…sometimes.
Gets joked about each year from what I gather. With the Softimage XSI thing you might freak a few newcomers out though.
I get the feeling that Blender source code development is so far scattered worldwide now that selling it may actually be impossible as you would have to track down everyone that has contributed (or at least significantly to the official releases) and get them to not only agree, but agree on price, who gets how much… etc.
It’s a comforting thought.
Seeing as how anyone can legally sell Blender, couldn’t Autodesk do the same thing? They could start their own fork of Blender with their own implementations and then charge people $5000 for it… Granted, I don’t know who would buy it, but it’s the principle of the thing that irks me.
they would still have to release there changes to the source to comply with the GPL.
What I’m MORE worried about is that AutoDesk have been systematically purchasing every big 3D software company out there - thus making it harder to “argue” against an eventual onslaught from a horde of advocates trying to “speak” Autodesks cause
against the increasing threat of OpenSource software like Blender is…
…it’s no longer “a little piece” of insignificant software. By eliminating the
entire competition (aka - owning 90 percent of the 3d software out there) there
will be “no one” to side with us…except …well…us.
I’m serious! I’ve been following Blender since it’s breakout-from-stockholders-prison
back in NaN days, and it’s personal… can you imagine? It’s like a child you really
love THIS much - and you just wouldn’t stand for it getting destroyed by
something that only wants “money” and “greed” - while I have NOTHING against
capitalism itself - I oppose human “natural killer instinct greed”…that has
nothing to do with fair competition…it’s just “KILL the competition” attitude…
not with features…but by LAW… I hate that… and one of my biggest worries
is that one day - this WILL happen… I hope I’m wrong…but we better not
sleep on our laurels - but prepare - and make sure that Blender code and originality
always stays that way! 
who said there is no competition?
Maya competes with Max.
ahem Autodesk owns both Maya and Max, and are currently purchasing XSI.
True, but if Max started being outperformed by Maya enough (for example) autodesk would probably consider canning the weaker one to fund the stronger one.
Autodesk sure seem to have alot of capital to throw around, even in these times. So now it’s Blender, Lightwave, Modo, C4D and ZBrush (did I miss anyone) of the bigger apps that are still ‘independant’… It’s all weird to me. Them purchasing Mudbox made some sense to me, as it gave them a dedicated sculpting app which they currently lacked in their arsenal. But having Max and Maya, why go for XSI… is it just to kill competition?
That is not so much Autodest being rich as it is XSI not doing too well.
Daniel Langlois, the founder of Softimage, sold his business to Microsoft for 60 millions plus a nice job in 1994. In 1998 Microsoft sold it to Avid for 285 millions in stock and cash. Autodesk paid a mere 35 millions…
J.
IamInnocent,
that is interesting (i would have imagined a LOT more money that 35 mill).
Didn’t Adobe buy Macromedia for 92 Million? Maybe I remember that wrong?
Accordingly to this :
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html
it was an all-stock transaction valued at 3.4 billions in 2005.
3D is still really just a niche market compared to 2D isn’t it ? LOL
J.
