We got slashdotted again thanks for the free publicity M$.

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
21

Young Shoemaker comes into town selling good shoes. Well-established shoe conglomerate tycoon doesn’t give a dang, until the young shoemaker, out of hard work and quality sales, starts cutting a slice into their market segment.

Smiling, conglomerate visits the young dude. Tells him he’ll buy all of his production – they can’t buy enough shoes. Young guy makes a big investment to increase production. The the conglomerate… simply doesn’t buy anything.

Moral: your competitor only smiles when he’s hiding a big knife behind his back. And he doesn’t really believe in win-win.

22

From http://review.zdnet.com/4520-6033_16-4206342.html:

There he was, Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, up on stage in all his resplendent glory, skipping around like a certifiable nut job.

“Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Come on, get up, get up…come onnnnn! Whooo, Whoo!” Ballmer screamed to the Microsoft faithful, working himself into a frenzy as Gloria Estefan’s “Get on Your Feet” blared over the loudspeakers. “Come on, give it up for me…whooo, whooo!”

AFTER 40 SECONDS of jumping around, Ballmer finally wound up his monkey dance and settled behind the lectern to catch his staggered breath.

“I have four words for ya,” he said, breathing heavily. (I thought he was about to say, “Get me a doctor!”) But ever the inspirational leader, he gave the audience what it wanted.

“I…love…this…company…yessssssss!”

Wild applause.

THAT CLIP made for some interesting watercooler talk in cubicles up and down Silicon Valley as it circulated around the Internet. Even the CNBC television network picked it up, surely leading some investors to inquire whether really potent ganja was being smoked by certain denizens of the Redmond, Wash., region.

A few days later, another clip of Ballmer made its way through cyberspace, this time showing him addressing a developers conference.

Clapping his hands in rhythm, Ballmer, drenched in sweat, strutted back and forth to an increasingly throaty reception from the audience:

“Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers,” he repeated, working himself into near catatonia “Yes!!!”

NOW, IT’S EASY for armchair wisenheimers to shake their heads and cluck on about whether it’s fitting for the CEO of the world’s largest independent software company to conduct himself in public like a cheerleader stuck in perennial hyperdrive.

He’s not well.

They’re all a bunch of Moonies.

My CEO wouldn’t do that.

Yeah, well, that’s the point. Your CEO wouldn’t do that, and that’s probably one reason why your company’s stock price is plummeting to new lows while yet another round of layoffs is in the works. Mock Ballmer all you want, but the passion of Microsoft’s CEO hints at a larger truth about the software maker.

And you think these guys are NOT religious?

There’s a lesson to learn from that. Open source, including Blender, would be nowhere without the “religious maniacs” as you call them. They are the driving force. After 33 years of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish they are the only ones left standing. Being “pragmatic” and appeasing an enemy who is out to destroy you (as declared by himself many times) is a recipe for disaster.

Whenever Microsoft offers to “help” someone, there are strings attached. This time is no exception.

23

I thought the scary thing from MS was when they said they wanted to move towards more open standards like OOXML. shudder

Really?
From: http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html

I performed a deliberate experiment some years ago using one of the early Apple Macintosh computers. I loaded a children’s program, The Manhole, where user interaction is strictly (and cleverly) limited to “clicking” on various places on an image. Clicking consists of moving the cursor to some location on the screen by moving the mouse on a surface and momentarily pressing the only button on the mouse. Clicking on certain places yields a new screen. This cold description does not express the delight most people find in running The Manhole program, but that is not relevant here.

My subject was an intelligent, computer-literate, university-trained teacher visiting from Finland who had not seen a mouse or any advertising or literature about it. With the program running, I pointed to the mouse, said it was “a mouse”, and that one used it to operate the program. Her first act was to lift the mouse and move it about in the air. She discovered the ball on the bottom, held the mouse upside down, and proceeded to turn the ball. However, in this position the ball is not riding on the position pick-offs and it does nothing. After shaking it, and making a number of other attempts at finding a way to use it, she gave up and asked me how it worked. She had never seen anything where you moved the whole object rather than some part of it (like the joysticks she had previously used with computers): it was not intuitive. She also did not intuit that the large raised area on top was a button.

Once you know the basics, it’s possible to use.

24

I give that a big whatever. You crazy open sourcies are all the same: " Its a conspiracy, their monopolizing the industry, blah blah blah". If strings attatched is that they get to say they helped with a very successful open source app, why wouldnt they do it? Theyre a company, and thats good pub. Similar to Blender and its ‘horrible gui’ reputation, horribley narrow minded folks see the word ‘microsoft’ and start going nuts with the M$ junk. Cmon. Theyre a corporation and strstegize as such, but you guys act like theyre the spawn of satan.

The only thing we wouldnt have without you religious folks is the constant rants.

25

Heh i don’t agree. In my opinion developers should jump into code::block with Intel compiler as fas as they can.

26

my favorite IDE as of now, next to gEdit

27

United States Microsoft antitrust case
European Union Microsoft competition case

The only thing we wouldnt have without you religious folks is the constant rants.

It’s kind of funny to be called religious by someone who still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

28

Well,

I would call them fanatics not religious, they are more intelligent than that, just not very rational.
If you want to witness what I am talking about first hand, Log onto #Ubuntu and try to suggest that they start using proprietary drivers, rather then the crap ones by default.
You will have all kinds of people totally melting down.

I will never understand why they have to follow the GPL or GNU so closely. It seems that it is hurting them more than it is helping them.

Rather then hireing 1 lawyer team, and making a license that allows GPL ,GNU,FLOSS, and close source drivers to be distributed together… They would rather wait for a bunch of volunteers to re-invent the wheel. (and alll the users to suffer throught the testing, with software and hardware failures)

I mean REALLY! should a licence be so restrictive? they are supposed to be free. But rather than free they have a restrictive licence dictating the quality of their outcome.

just think of how cool Ubuntu would be, If you could just install it, and not have to uninstall a bunch of stuff, to install the working stuff?
Right out of the box, everything works!
People that pay for 3D hardware, usually like to use their 3D hardware. (Duh? Duhhh Duuuhhhh Duuuuuh!)
People that pay for a X-fi sound card usually want to hear more than one piece of software working at the same time. Like ummm Games and their favorit music. (Duh? DuuuuuH! DUUUUH!)
People that have a Wi-fi card expect to use their hardware to connect to the internet rather then the phone modem by default. (DUH! duh? duhh duhh DUH!)

Why dose it have to be One way or another… Why cant they have it both ways?

They really need to rethink the licensing, it is hurting them more then it is helping them.

A good Linux experience takes BOTH closed and open drivers.

Now back to how M$ could help blender,

For one, they could include .blend files to their MIME database, so when someone that dose not have blender installed, the automatic “Open with” feature tells them that the file is opened with a free application called Blender, and a link to the blender site.

Another is to suggest to the M$ game companies that they all include importers and exporters for blender, so poor children do not go and download pirated copies of maya, and XSI to make content for their favorite games.

They could make it so that .blend, and the .blend1 backup files get different icons so users do not open the wrong file by mistake.

They could add .Blend files to the New context menu after blender is installed.

Gee wiz… there are quite a few things M$ could do with windows to make it nice on people who use open source applications.

The few I listed could be done without destroying open source, and caving in the little FOSS universe.
Why cant people just learn to work together?

29

Hohoho. Playing the age card, very big of you. Now that I know who Im dealing with, I’ll just bow out with dignity.

30

It sounds to me that they want free help to make their new MMORPG game. That is so better than anything out there with unique attack and weapons selection modes. A whole world that’s like 8 times bigger than WOW and of course you’ll get credit when it’s finished.

31

I think you are confusing Ubuntu and Debian here. Ubuntu comes with proprietary drivers.

I mean REALLY! should a licence be so restrictive? they are supposed to be free. But rather than free they have a restrictive licence dictating the quality of their outcome.
Without the GPL there would be no Linux at all. And Blender would be a thing of the past too. Do you really expect individual developers or even large corporations such as IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems to contribute to open source projects without a licence designed to protect their investment?

Why dose it have to be One way or another… Why cant they have it both ways?
Because it doesn’t work. Linux drivers are kernel modules, i.e. they must be in sync with the kernel version. A binary driver interface would limit the portability of the Linux kernel. See here for more info: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable_api_nonsense.html

They really need to rethink the licensing, it is hurting them more then it is helping them.
You are wrong. OEMs are now beginning to push hardware vendors to open their specs so that FOSS drivers can become as good as the proprietary ones. ATI has already complied, thanks to pressure from Dell. The purists are winning, and everyone will benefit from it.

32

in regards to blender’s interface not being ‘intuitive’, i don’t think there’s any 3D program out there you’ll be able to instantly navigate well. I constantly struggled with 3DS Max’s and Maya’s but something aboot Blender’s clicked with me :frowning:

33

I truly, really dislike Microsoft. It’s not because of its capital, or its products (I don’t use them, and avoid them). It’s the abuse of power, inability to compete fairly, disregard of international laws/standards, lies and FUD spreading, underhanded business tactics and arrogance. People can call me “religious” or “zealot”, it doesn’t matter because I know better (excuse me if that sounds arrogant). I’ve followed the politics of software for nearly a decade, and everything about MS disgusts me, especially being a member of “the other side”. This isn’t about Office or Visual Studio being good products, because they undoubtedly are, this is about the company’s philosophy of ‘lock-in’, primarily with its formats. I don’t care if that’s the “capitalists way” - IMO that ideology can die already. Reading some of the comments, telling us “crazy open sourcies” to chill, are shortsighted. I think the best analogy - an extreme one, but hey, it helps paint the picture - is if USA will tells Iraq, 10 years from now, it wants to help the country by putting a bunch of soldiers there (that is, if the war is over in 10 years…). You think the people in Iraq would like to be told to “chill”?

Anyways, with that said, I can’t see what Microsoft can do to help make Blender better on Windows. It left the OpenGL ARB years ago (and pulled an ugly IP stunt the week after). What fileformats can it offer, and under the GPL no less? It still don’t grasp the concept of ‘cross-platform’ (besides Windows and Xbox. Yay…), and would like nothing more than to keep Linux down. At best we can hope this “reach out” is only a PR stunt to show the EU it’s “a good boy”. FLOSS doesn’t need Microsoft.

About the UI comments on /. : Useless. I have had enormous difficulties adjusting to Blender, but the UI is really nice. Some people think it’s like a game you have to learn in 5 minutes, and disregard it after that amount of time. I had a colleague who’s a software engineer laughing at me, when I showed the team some basic 3D concepts, because I chose to do it in Blender. Probably because he read on /. that Blenders UI is stupid :stuck_out_tongue:

34

MS shouldn’t be complaining. They weren’t doing too bad, once XP had years of bugs worked out of it, and XBOX and Halo and all… But Vista? They took all the bad things from XP, all the new bad ideas they came up with, plus they even stole bad ideas from OSX to make Vista! The first time I booted up a clean install of Vista I had flashbacks from installing XP, and I though “oh god, its like OSX!!”. It had such potential, but just failed… And, Office 2007? The UI reminds me of… Blender! Though… I do think that the old office UI was better. Less clicking to get to the buttons I need.

A little more on topic… I agree that the one thing that the corporations could do (in general) to support open-source initiatives is to increase hardware compatibility, through releasing drivers and such.

35

True that! Although some top programmers may need incentive other than recognition for their efforts.

36

I had a colleague who’s a software engineer laughing at me, when I showed the team some basic 3D concepts, because I chose to do it in Blender. Probably because he read on /. that Blenders UI is stupid

yea slashdot has really gone downhill, I just deleted my slashdot RSS link and bookmark.After reading what all the morons are saying about blender and open source stuff, i really dont want to be associated with them any more. If i want that kind of bullshit I will just go over to DIGG or Redit.

37

I never got into the slashdot gadget myself.

38

Wow, do you even know MS’s history, do you know the damage they have done to many sectors of the software market. I’m not saying that they plan to do the same with blender, in-fact I think they chose blender because frankly the app doesn’t need any help, it needs funding but it doesn’t need any developer resources. They’ve worked for years on the project without any help from MS and they can keep doing that until they feel they don’t have to. MS chose them because the project is already feature complete. and they just used Blender as a PR move to make it look like they actually care about the OSS community. They are offering nothing becaseu they don;t really expect blender to need anything other than the most minor of things liek documentation of some format. If they really wanted to help they would fund the next Blender Foundation projects.

MS has always had a history of mucking with things to their benefit and making things worse for everyone else in the process. Here is a huge example, the current industry leader in cg software is Maya, that wasn’t always the case. The leader used to be Softimage, Softimage got bought up by MS. MS wanted the app to only run on windows so that they could get the graphics professionals on their NT platform. While all of this was happening Alias was able to release Maya and overtake Softimage. I happen to like Maya, but in many ways I find Softimage|XSI far more inutitive and well thought out. However, the application is stuck on one platform (it runs on linux through a compatibility lib, similar to wine). And most of the good things that has happened to the Softimage (including Linux support) has happened well after they got sold to Avid, who understood what they had.

At some point PIXAR was going to be sold to MS, do you think they would be where they are now if that were the case, I hardly doubt it. Chances are MS would have cannibalized there rendering technology and made it windows specific, which anyone who has built or used a renderman renderfarm would tell you that its a bad idea, as precious resources are being wasted. Their animation department, which now actually brings them the most revenue, would probably be nowhere as big or as prevalent as they are now. Why because like you said MS is a corporation, they look at the bottom line as opposed to the big picture. Would they have waited for pixar to become lucrative? I highly doubt it. That right there is the problem with MS and their corporate mentality, they rather give you something crappy and make money now, than think of something good and make money as people realize what it is they got.

The Xbox 360 should be the biggest example of what I’m talking. Yes they are making money on the product now, but the product itself has been plagued with huge hardware issues. Because they wanted to be on the fence and they wanted to reach the market with a cheaper product they didn’t include any form aof next-gen format int ot their console, now you have developers like Rockstar complaining about disk space.

Sony took the long-term approach they took a huge gamble with the PS3, they went with more expensive technology, and that affected their adoption in the beginning. Now the PS3 has been slowly making headway in the market as people realize the quality of the product and are fed up with the lack there of from the Xbox360. Now Sony is a corporation like any other, they also look at the bottom line, but with the PS line they have always taken huge chances, that frankly I don’t think any other console maker would do, but it pays off for them. Why this rant about game consoles, because I wanted to show the disparity in quality verses quantity that MS is so well known for. Sure they have a lot of maney but their products are hit or miss. They sell products not because they are actually good, but because they can bombard the market with their products to the point that people don’t really have a choice.

39

Mmm, just like I said, constant rants…

40

pls. think it over, it is the normal way for those who believe, that everyone who is not sharing their way has the wrong religion. They never can imagine there are people without religion. It is the old game:
Q: do you believe in GOD?
A: no
Q: do you believe in many gods?
A: no
Q: do you believe in a higher rule?
A: no
Q: you are a non-believer?
A: you know what religion that is?
Q: yes, you are a gentile!

– sorry for my bad english, i had to lookup this word “gentile” and i am not shure it it express what i think about -
i like more to express the problem with mathematics:
you can count numbers with your fingers, easy thing for babys,
goes like 1, … 2, … 3, … 4, … 5, …
and need the second hand for more,
and more goes with your toes
…
… but ZERO is complitely different and to calculate with it is a lot harder than using negative numbers