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Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

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41–50 of 115 posts

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#41

I'd rather see firms chuck some money to perhaps Blender or something to get a viable alternative developed than send angry letters to the featureless monolith that is Autodesk. They're the market leader. They don't care. They already have firms by the metaphorical balls with astronomical licensing fees and know people will pay because they set the standards across many industries. In architecture, anyway, the proble…

For those others that wonder and want to save a Google query:

BIM = Building Information Management

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#42

Adobe should come up with a competitor. QuarkXpress abused its customers badly with high license fees and hardware dongles and all sorts of stuff like that. When Adobe came out with InDesign, everyone switched and Quark lost its dominant position. Same thing happened to Microsoft in Mobile. People were so sick of their monopolistic behavior that they lost totally to Apple and Google when they came out with a competit…

Summoning Adobe to fix a monopoly feels... Perverse. At a technical level, they might have the chops to build something from scratch, but they've more than abused their market position over the last two decades. We don't need another standard without interop. Put the engineering into open source or open standards. We can't continue with software society relies on being locked in like this.

We're grading on a curve here.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#43
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether that has its downsides though - with Google, Apple etc. being involved in development I wonder whether that hollows out the core of participating developers and functionally makes the project dependent on paid employees.

Why would you conflate the benefits of open source with a requirement for the devs to not make money? My vision is completely the opposite, the more money we pump into open source the better. We have to get out of this idea that open source is only good (and pure) when it's some dev slaving away after hours.

Open source was never about being against commercial activity anyway.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#44

One potential source of disruption here (though I’m sure many folks will likewise feel it is frustrating to be locked into a SaaS model), is we are starting to see several intriguing startups building browser-based CAD software that are serious contenders for “the Figma of Architecture/BIM” crown, with the likes of: Arcol ( http://arcol.io ), Infurnia ( https://www.infurnia.com/ ), Qonic ( https://www.qonic.com/ ), a…

Why is "browser-based" a selling point here?

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#45

I'd rather see firms chuck some money to perhaps Blender or something to get a viable alternative developed than send angry letters to the featureless monolith that is Autodesk. They're the market leader. They don't care. They already have firms by the metaphorical balls with astronomical licensing fees and know people will pay because they set the standards across many industries. In architecture, anyway, the proble…

No post body was provided.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#46

One potential source of disruption here (though I’m sure many folks will likewise feel it is frustrating to be locked into a SaaS model), is we are starting to see several intriguing startups building browser-based CAD software that are serious contenders for “the Figma of Architecture/BIM” crown, with the likes of: Arcol ( http://arcol.io ), Infurnia ( https://www.infurnia.com/ ), Qonic ( https://www.qonic.com/ ), a…

Why is "browser-based" a selling point here?

If it's anything like onshape (the only browser based CAD I know of), browser based means: everyone uses the same version of the software, you don't have to wrestle your it department for installation rights, you can login and work on your designs from anywhere with any average laptop, there are no files (houseV3finalfinal), probably proper baked in version control with branching and merging... everything software developers take for granted that we poor CAD designers only can dream of.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#47
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, definitely. Blender is a shining example of what's possible, and people are starting to take notice, particularly in the cinema space.

I wonder whether that has its downsides though - with Google, Apple etc. being involved in development I wonder whether that hollows out the core of participating developers and functionally makes the project dependent on paid employees.

Corporations which contribute code to Blender have mostly contributed patches for supporting their hardware. AMD and Apple are the ones I know for sure have done that, Intel and NVidia may have done it as well.

Ton Roosendaal also knows what he is doing. As he explained at the 2019 Blender conference keynote, the message to corporations is not "how can Blender help you" but "join us in Blender's mission". [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/Jcl3--cbULk?t=397

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#48
I wonder how this will continue. Because it's not just so simple for these people, right ... phase 1:

1) software eats the world (this is far from complete, even in CAD)

which leads to phase 2:

2) a growing part of the knowledge of how industry X works (in this case construction, and of course fighter jet design) gets transferred into software (both into software companies, and directly into software) ... and forgotten by actual practitioners

3) software, to an extent, leaves those practitioners behind (first by needing much fewer of them), then it outright destroys them by demanding an ever greater share of the profits of industry X

4) autodesk ... please inform me what phase 4 is.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Software sold in a box, can't resell it? Tell me more.

Not unusual. MS used to do the same thing. Not excusing either party, just pointing out it's not that uncommon in high-end corporate software. You're not buying a thing in a box, you're buying a license with associated terms. Which may include prohibiting resale. If the US had credible anti-trust laws this kind of thing would be taken apart in court. But it doesn't, so here we are.

Like if you don't even open it? Isn't the license shit only in the software when you start it up? Or do they ask for your social and link it to the box? The for sure want to.
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