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RED are penises. They worked closely with the foundry to make a tool(storm) to allow logging, editing and quick grading. It was very popular, apart from the RED

RED are penises. They worked closely with the foundry to make a tool(storm) to allow logging, editing and quick grading. It was very popular, apart from the RED users had to pay for it. They pirated it with gay abandon. the only thing worse than RED are the rabid fanbois that use them. Anyway, RED saw the software, stole the interface and made a free version. RED then threatened to take the Foundry to court, after they integrated REDcode into Nuke. They went on about how innovate and clever the format was. Its just a tar with JPEG 2000.

zowanet 6y ago
As much as I dislike many of RED's practices, I must state that this version of events is highly inaccurate. Source: I am a former Foundry employee.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  I too am also a former foundry employee. I was at IBC when we released storm, I had the privilege of using 4 red rockets, all of which broke. I was there looking at the RED forums where they were sharing the cracked version. I was there when Whitmore got the email about redcode, and not using the official SDK. That we "had illegally reverse engineered proprietary code". I was at the dinner when either bruno or sam said "it turns out they like storm a lot, but not enough to pay for it"
  - zowanet 6y ago
    <waving> Hi W. </waving> Interesting, it seems that even after several years away from the company, I have fallen foul of the Foundry's culture of secrecy. > I had the privilege of using 4 red rockets, all of which broke. Unsurprising; the original RR was a repurposed DVS Atomix with custom firmware. Now redundant since R3D decoding on GPU was released. RED's overpriced, unreliable hardware is my #1 gripe, but not really relevant to this discussion. > I was there when Whitmore got the email about redcode, and not using the official SDK. That we "had illegally reverse engineered proprietary code". I didn't know that a non-SDK-based REDCODE integration was ever in Nuke. If correct, to be honest that was an unwise move anyway; RED have always warned against reverse engineering in their licence agreements (and yes, reverse engineering was necessary to read R3Ds without the SDK, it was never plain vanilla JPEG2000 and didn't use the tar format at all). If Whitmore allowed it, he should have expected RED's response. The legal grey area is that reverse engineering a file format isn't the same thing as reverse engineering proprietary executable code by disassembly. However, after having had a similar run-in with RED regarding reverse engineering, I have no doubt that Jannard's legal team would have persisted and come out on top. > I was there looking at the RED forums where they were sharing the cracked version. Sure, some end users pirated Storm like other Foundry software because the licence manager had been cracked long before, but that wasn't RED's fault. > RED saw the software, stole the interface and made a free version. The interfaces were no more similar that any two "pro" video apps (REDCINE-X looked particularly awful at launch). RED built a competing app with an overlapping feature set. This happens all the time. > "it turns out they like storm a lot, but not enough to pay for it" And why should they have? RED established a team that could develop their app without charging end users (a loss leader, I suppose), while still remaining profitable. The Foundry failed, or declined, to do so. Storm could have been expanded to cater for the needs of the DSLR (and later mirrorless) filmmaking communities; a much bigger market than indie RED shooters that was crying out for reliable and affordable post software. Instead, Storm was assimilated into Hiero with a big price tag for a handful of customers. Years later, Bill told me that Storm was ultimately killed "because we didn't understand the low-end market". They could have just asked.
    - KaiserPro 6y ago
      Hello! I hope you're all well!

zowanet 6y ago

As much as I dislike many of RED's practices, I must state that this version of events is highly inaccurate. Source: I am a former Foundry employee.

KaiserPro 6y ago
I too am also a former foundry employee. I was at IBC when we released storm, I had the privilege of using 4 red rockets, all of which broke. I was there looking at the RED forums where they were sharing the cracked version. I was there when Whitmore got the email about redcode, and not using the official SDK. That we "had illegally reverse engineered proprietary code". I was at the dinner when either bruno or sam said "it turns out they like storm a lot, but not enough to pay for it"
- zowanet 6y ago
  <waving> Hi W. </waving> Interesting, it seems that even after several years away from the company, I have fallen foul of the Foundry's culture of secrecy. > I had the privilege of using 4 red rockets, all of which broke. Unsurprising; the original RR was a repurposed DVS Atomix with custom firmware. Now redundant since R3D decoding on GPU was released. RED's overpriced, unreliable hardware is my #1 gripe, but not really relevant to this discussion. > I was there when Whitmore got the email about redcode, and not using the official SDK. That we "had illegally reverse engineered proprietary code". I didn't know that a non-SDK-based REDCODE integration was ever in Nuke. If correct, to be honest that was an unwise move anyway; RED have always warned against reverse engineering in their licence agreements (and yes, reverse engineering was necessary to read R3Ds without the SDK, it was never plain vanilla JPEG2000 and didn't use the tar format at all). If Whitmore allowed it, he should have expected RED's response. The legal grey area is that reverse engineering a file format isn't the same thing as reverse engineering proprietary executable code by disassembly. However, after having had a similar run-in with RED regarding reverse engineering, I have no doubt that Jannard's legal team would have persisted and come out on top. > I was there looking at the RED forums where they were sharing the cracked version. Sure, some end users pirated Storm like other Foundry software because the licence manager had been cracked long before, but that wasn't RED's fault. > RED saw the software, stole the interface and made a free version. The interfaces were no more similar that any two "pro" video apps (REDCINE-X looked particularly awful at launch). RED built a competing app with an overlapping feature set. This happens all the time. > "it turns out they like storm a lot, but not enough to pay for it" And why should they have? RED established a team that could develop their app without charging end users (a loss leader, I suppose), while still remaining profitable. The Foundry failed, or declined, to do so. Storm could have been expanded to cater for the needs of the DSLR (and later mirrorless) filmmaking communities; a much bigger market than indie RED shooters that was crying out for reliable and affordable post software. Instead, Storm was assimilated into Hiero with a big price tag for a handful of customers. Years later, Bill told me that Storm was ultimately killed "because we didn't understand the low-end market". They could have just asked.
  - KaiserPro 6y ago
    Hello! I hope you're all well!