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I mean… funding is good, but heck, Adobe is one of those companies that doesn’t have a great track record of being nice, fair or kind. See for example, their “y

I mean… funding is good, but heck, Adobe is one of those companies that doesn’t have a great track record of being nice, fair or kind. See for example, their “year subscription billed monthly” lockin. What’s in this for them? …because I flat out don’t believe for an instant they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

kristaps 5y ago
Maybe the same reason why Google keeps Firefox alive - to be able to show there is no monopoly in some category of software.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  Does Adobe have any products that compete with Blender directly?
  - ink404 5y ago
    Dimension could be seen as competition
  - kakwa_ 5y ago
    I'm not sure how much of it overlaps with Blender and how much of it is complementary to Blender. But Adobe recently acquired Allegorithmic and their 3D texture tool Substance. https://www.substance3d.com/ https://www.substance3d.com/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/adobe-acquires-allegorithmic-makers-of-the-substance-texture-tools https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/adobe-acquires-allegorithm...
- dartharva 5y ago
  Is it really in Google's control whether or not Firefox lives? The only connection Firefox has seems to be that Google is one of its sponsors in exchange of being its primary search engine. I don't think they'd go that far as to intentionally denying Firefox users access to their sites even if they wanted, because that'd immediately draw some lawsuits.
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    > I don't think they'd go that far as to intentionally denying Firefox users access to their sites even if they wanted, because that'd immediately draw some lawsuits. This already happened, some sites wouldn't work in Firefox unless Firefox had the Chrome user agent string. Also who is going to sue them? Firefox? That's like kicking yourself in the balls.
jdavis703 5y ago
It’s quite possible that their “subscription growth” team and “non-profit corporate giving” team are run by different people with different goals.
devwastaken 5y ago
It's not as if adobe is a singular person whom makes strategic decisions on what projects the company donates to. Someone in the company wants to donate to blender foundation, so they do. Case closed. An exec at John Deere donated 500,000 to a 501c3 (non lobbying) for right to repair, which John deer the company matched. Doesn't mean the company is going to be supporting it anytime soon. If we want to get into hypotheticals, it's within adobies line of products to get into 3D. Maybe they want to look into copy+pasting blender for their product line.
- echelon 5y ago
  > An exec at John Deere donated 500,000 to a 501c3 (non lobbying) for right to repair, which John deer the company matched. This is much like Mark Zuckerberg's donation to Diaspora [1], the decentralized and open source social network. It's a token donation to the opposition that isn't really viewed as a substantial threat. It can be pointed to internally and externally as a fig leaf, but it doesn't yield any strategic edge. It's cheap posturing, and it works. [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/ https://www.wired.com/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Similarly, the Microsoft investment in Apple way back when. Both are doing well today and MS is probably healthier for the competition.
  - usrusr 5y ago
    There can also be some "the enemy of my enemy" involved. Does Adobe even have any products that compete with Blender? Other companies have, and they might also have products that compete with Adobe.
    - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
      Blender has an NLE. It is the most recommended free video editor right now. Definitely could eat into Premiere Pro/AE
saiojd 5y ago
Blender is starting to get strong traction in the industry, and will likely eat Autodesk alive in the following decades (at least the 3D modelling part of its business). It may be a way of ensuring they stay relevant; for example, if tools like Photoshop "play well" with Blender, users are less likely to switch to something else.
- abakker 5y ago
  Last time I checked, blender didn’t do solid modeling or understand tolerances - has this changed? Can it really be used for industrial design, or is it really just a competitor to the animation software that autodesk makes?
  - DoctorOW 5y ago
    I'm not in the industrial design field so I'll point out that Blender is also a competitor to Autodesk's offerings in VFX, game design, and 2D painting/animation.
  - saiojd 5y ago
    No and I don't think it will, I was referring to modelling for the product of movies/games.
- timeon 5y ago
  > at least the 3D modelling part of its business Yes in MESH modelling. Blender could eat 3Ds Max. But not in NURBS and BIM. (I guess I am too much pedantic about '3D modelling' here.)
an_opabinia 5y ago
> Adobe is one of those companies that [isn’t] nice… See for example, [it charges money for software] The absolute state of HN.
- okwubodu 5y ago
  This is very funny but I think they mean the misleading pricing model Adobe traps users with.
- jclardy 5y ago
  Charging money for software is perfectly fine. But marketing a "monthly" subscription but having a yearly lock-in is anti-consumer. My guess is you don't know about that part? If you subscribe to $9.99/mo photoshop you can't cancel two months in without paying 75% of your remaining subscription cost for the entire year.
  - killerdhmo 5y ago
    You can pay monthly, it’s a different fee. This is identical to many SaaS products I subscribe to who offer a discount if you pay for a year.
    - elliekelly 5y ago
      Adobe’s billing practices use all kinds of dark patterns though. Let’s say you have an annual subscription billed monthly that renews on January 1. When the monthly charge comes through on the 1st of January (like it has every month) and you realize your one year subscription is up and would like to cancel most places would either (a) refund the January 1 charge and immediately shut off your service or (b) keep the January 1 charge and shut off your service at the end of the month. But Adobe, Adobe opts for (c) na-na-poo-poo read the fine print - we got you for another year of monthly charges, sucker!
    - gfxgirl 5y ago
      it depends on the product. After Effects you can pay monthly and cancel anytime. Photoshop only has yearly subscriptions paid either monthly or all at once. Some people who buy don't see the "annual subscription" detail and then whine later
daniel-thompson 5y ago
Perhaps they see this as a way to get some measure of influence over Blender's future direction, which would be strategically valuable. Or maybe it's to give themselves cover when they're accused of being anti-competitive, etc.
qwertox 5y ago
They are planning to integrate two marketplaces into Blender via plugins. One for Shaders, one for Animation Curves.
ThePadawan 5y ago
Well, this post is on the top of HN right now. I think the investment has already paid for itself.
Topgamer7 5y ago
I think this basically gets them support from Blender directly. Its like paying for a support contract.
baby 5y ago
They’re funding 2500$/month, it’s nothing, they just want a seat at the table to influence the product.
MiddleEndian 5y ago
I'm working on a video project and I needed to create a nuclear explosion animation. After Effects doesn't have the physics engine necessary to make something like that, so it comes with a trial version of Maxon Cinema 4D. However that version is pretty limited and couldn't do what I needed. Presumably if I paid Maxon I could get the "full version" or whatever, but instead I went with Blender, which proved to be a very good tool. Meanwhile, After Effects was effectively rendered (pun intended) irrelevant in that process. I assume Adobe is aware of this kind of thing and wants to keep itself as relevant as possible.
luke2m 5y ago
Yes, and Google funds the existences of Firefox.
imvetri 5y ago
Hahaha. Learn from the past -Macromedia.
panzagl 5y ago
More open source devs working on Blender means fewer working on Inkscape and Gimp.
rvz 5y ago
> Adobe is one of those companies that doesn’t have a great track record of being nice, fair or kind. See for example, their “year subscription billed monthly” lockin. You must have had some concerns when other large companies were given board seats of other open source products because they had thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars? No? You said 'one of those companies'. So I'm sure there are companies worse than Adobe that are already doing it. Then we will later complain that they will use this as a way of controlling the project. > …because I flat out don’t believe for an instant they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Don't blame you for your skepticism, but once the money rolls in, then everything is forgotten; as always.
zatatat 5y ago
Adobe bought Substance not too long ago. They might be working on better integration with Blender so that they can sell more subscriptions for that product.

kristaps 5y ago

Maybe the same reason why Google keeps Firefox alive - to be able to show there is no monopoly in some category of software.

Hamuko 5y ago
Does Adobe have any products that compete with Blender directly?
- ink404 5y ago
  Dimension could be seen as competition
- kakwa_ 5y ago
  I'm not sure how much of it overlaps with Blender and how much of it is complementary to Blender. But Adobe recently acquired Allegorithmic and their 3D texture tool Substance. https://www.substance3d.com/ https://www.substance3d.com/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/adobe-acquires-allegorithmic-makers-of-the-substance-texture-tools https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/adobe-acquires-allegorithm...
dartharva 5y ago
Is it really in Google's control whether or not Firefox lives? The only connection Firefox has seems to be that Google is one of its sponsors in exchange of being its primary search engine. I don't think they'd go that far as to intentionally denying Firefox users access to their sites even if they wanted, because that'd immediately draw some lawsuits.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  > I don't think they'd go that far as to intentionally denying Firefox users access to their sites even if they wanted, because that'd immediately draw some lawsuits. This already happened, some sites wouldn't work in Firefox unless Firefox had the Chrome user agent string. Also who is going to sue them? Firefox? That's like kicking yourself in the balls.

jdavis703 5y ago

It’s quite possible that their “subscription growth” team and “non-profit corporate giving” team are run by different people with different goals.

devwastaken 5y ago

It's not as if adobe is a singular person whom makes strategic decisions on what projects the company donates to. Someone in the company wants to donate to blender foundation, so they do. Case closed. An exec at John Deere donated 500,000 to a 501c3 (non lobbying) for right to repair, which John deer the company matched. Doesn't mean the company is going to be supporting it anytime soon. If we want to get into hypotheticals, it's within adobies line of products to get into 3D. Maybe they want to look into copy+pasting blender for their product line.

echelon 5y ago
> An exec at John Deere donated 500,000 to a 501c3 (non lobbying) for right to repair, which John deer the company matched. This is much like Mark Zuckerberg's donation to Diaspora [1], the decentralized and open source social network. It's a token donation to the opposition that isn't really viewed as a substantial threat. It can be pointed to internally and externally as a fig leaf, but it doesn't yield any strategic edge. It's cheap posturing, and it works. [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/ https://www.wired.com/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Similarly, the Microsoft investment in Apple way back when. Both are doing well today and MS is probably healthier for the competition.
- usrusr 5y ago
  There can also be some "the enemy of my enemy" involved. Does Adobe even have any products that compete with Blender? Other companies have, and they might also have products that compete with Adobe.
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    Blender has an NLE. It is the most recommended free video editor right now. Definitely could eat into Premiere Pro/AE

saiojd 5y ago

Blender is starting to get strong traction in the industry, and will likely eat Autodesk alive in the following decades (at least the 3D modelling part of its business). It may be a way of ensuring they stay relevant; for example, if tools like Photoshop "play well" with Blender, users are less likely to switch to something else.

abakker 5y ago
Last time I checked, blender didn’t do solid modeling or understand tolerances - has this changed? Can it really be used for industrial design, or is it really just a competitor to the animation software that autodesk makes?
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  I'm not in the industrial design field so I'll point out that Blender is also a competitor to Autodesk's offerings in VFX, game design, and 2D painting/animation.
- saiojd 5y ago
  No and I don't think it will, I was referring to modelling for the product of movies/games.
timeon 5y ago
> at least the 3D modelling part of its business Yes in MESH modelling. Blender could eat 3Ds Max. But not in NURBS and BIM. (I guess I am too much pedantic about '3D modelling' here.)

an_opabinia 5y ago

> Adobe is one of those companies that [isn’t] nice… See for example, [it charges money for software] The absolute state of HN.

okwubodu 5y ago
This is very funny but I think they mean the misleading pricing model Adobe traps users with.
jclardy 5y ago
Charging money for software is perfectly fine. But marketing a "monthly" subscription but having a yearly lock-in is anti-consumer. My guess is you don't know about that part? If you subscribe to $9.99/mo photoshop you can't cancel two months in without paying 75% of your remaining subscription cost for the entire year.
- killerdhmo 5y ago
  You can pay monthly, it’s a different fee. This is identical to many SaaS products I subscribe to who offer a discount if you pay for a year.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    Adobe’s billing practices use all kinds of dark patterns though. Let’s say you have an annual subscription billed monthly that renews on January 1. When the monthly charge comes through on the 1st of January (like it has every month) and you realize your one year subscription is up and would like to cancel most places would either (a) refund the January 1 charge and immediately shut off your service or (b) keep the January 1 charge and shut off your service at the end of the month. But Adobe, Adobe opts for (c) na-na-poo-poo read the fine print - we got you for another year of monthly charges, sucker!
  - gfxgirl 5y ago
    it depends on the product. After Effects you can pay monthly and cancel anytime. Photoshop only has yearly subscriptions paid either monthly or all at once. Some people who buy don't see the "annual subscription" detail and then whine later

daniel-thompson 5y ago

Perhaps they see this as a way to get some measure of influence over Blender's future direction, which would be strategically valuable. Or maybe it's to give themselves cover when they're accused of being anti-competitive, etc.

qwertox 5y ago

They are planning to integrate two marketplaces into Blender via plugins. One for Shaders, one for Animation Curves.

ThePadawan 5y ago

Well, this post is on the top of HN right now. I think the investment has already paid for itself.

Topgamer7 5y ago

I think this basically gets them support from Blender directly. Its like paying for a support contract.

baby 5y ago

They’re funding 2500$/month, it’s nothing, they just want a seat at the table to influence the product.

MiddleEndian 5y ago

I'm working on a video project and I needed to create a nuclear explosion animation. After Effects doesn't have the physics engine necessary to make something like that, so it comes with a trial version of Maxon Cinema 4D. However that version is pretty limited and couldn't do what I needed. Presumably if I paid Maxon I could get the "full version" or whatever, but instead I went with Blender, which proved to be a very good tool. Meanwhile, After Effects was effectively rendered (pun intended) irrelevant in that process. I assume Adobe is aware of this kind of thing and wants to keep itself as relevant as possible.

luke2m 5y ago

Yes, and Google funds the existences of Firefox.

imvetri 5y ago

Hahaha. Learn from the past -Macromedia.

panzagl 5y ago

More open source devs working on Blender means fewer working on Inkscape and Gimp.

rvz 5y ago

> Adobe is one of those companies that doesn’t have a great track record of being nice, fair or kind. See for example, their “year subscription billed monthly” lockin. You must have had some concerns when other large companies were given board seats of other open source products because they had thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars? No? You said 'one of those companies'. So I'm sure there are companies worse than Adobe that are already doing it. Then we will later complain that they will use this as a way of controlling the project. > …because I flat out don’t believe for an instant they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Don't blame you for your skepticism, but once the money rolls in, then everything is forgotten; as always.

zatatat 5y ago

Adobe bought Substance not too long ago. They might be working on better integration with Blender so that they can sell more subscriptions for that product.