For-Profit (Creative) Software

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I saw this video recently, and I thought it was interesting. It’s long and a bit meandering, but it’s a perspective that I appreciated seeing.

While I have been affected by some of the things the author in the video mentions, as a software developer I haven’t really appreciated it fully. In software, we have such a widespread culture of open-source that this kind of thing doesn’t happen as often (and when it does, we have alternative choices).

It’s really an awful situation to be in, when you the tools you have trained on and depend on for being productive are taken away or price gouged. I’m imagining becoming an amazing guitarist that people want to see play, and then finding out that every single guitar and guitar factory in existence has been evaporated just because some company decided it didn’t want to make them anymore.

Anyway, I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say here, I just appreciated the perspective.

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I originally was going to school for engineering and it is just as big of a mess for engineering software. I learned much of the modeling skills I have in Autodesk products and a little bit in SKetchUp. At the time Sketchup was the affordable or near free option as it was owned by google. After I realized I couldn’t afford AutoCAD I tried going for SKetchUp and what do you know its 1,000 for a year license. There are other options like NX or Solidworks but those have also reached the same pricing. I don’t need that level of software anymore but I looked just the other day at what used to be “the underdog” in drafting software for the entertainment industry (Vectorworks) and now even that is like 1,500 a year.