4 ms·

Can anyone speak to the general appetite at Autodesk for open-source projects?

mrcwinn 3y ago
[Former employee of several years.] Generally speaking, I would say if Autodesk believes open source can advance a business goal, it will support that open source project. But I never got a sense of Autodesk sort of culturally or in a deeply embedded way caring about open source. High marks for how they treat employees and as a place to work, but not an OS leader.
- JamesCoyne 3y ago
  [Current Autodesk CAD user] Thanks! Nice to hear their employees are well treated; atleast some good is coming from the yearly subscriptions.
  - inferiorhuman 3y ago
    Autodesk as an employer has fallen quite a bit from even a decade ago. Despite the culture of crabs in a bucket playing at empire building Bass' tenure was marked by generally employee friendly policies and a sincere passion behind some of their projects. The same definitely can't be said for the marketing dweebs that took over (and judging by Fusion they've ramped up their anti-customer initiatives too). The shift towards subscription based bullshit was essentially the start of the effort to oust Bass.
- vxNsr 3y ago
  Off topic but: currently needing to use autocad for a work project, any recommendations for learning autolisp or w/e the scripting language is? I was having trouble finding a good resource for this, seems like everyone just knows it and the only way to learn is to have good enough Google-fu to find the forum post that fulfills your criteria. And hope it’s not out of date.
- inferiorhuman 3y ago
  Right. See also Ochopod and OpenStack. Open source is the means to a promotion, nothing more, nothing less.
monuszero 3y ago
[current employee of Autodesk] Minor contributions to existing OSS are generally encouraged day-to-day by employees. There are also more strategic open source initiatives such as the USD stuff covered here. Many of us, especially in the research division, would love to put more code out there. (For example some tools that we use internally) The good news on this front is that there is now a sanctioned process for this to happen, and the attitude seems much warmer than when I joined a decade ago. I’m personally involved in trying to open source some of my own work in the robotics domain, and have been pleasantly surprised with the response.

[Former employee of several years.] Generally speaking, I would say if Autodesk believes open source can advance a business goal, it will support that open source project. But I never got a sense of Autodesk sort of culturally or in a deeply embedded way caring about open source. High marks for how they treat employees and as a place to work, but not an OS leader.

JamesCoyne 3y ago
[Current Autodesk CAD user] Thanks! Nice to hear their employees are well treated; atleast some good is coming from the yearly subscriptions.
- inferiorhuman 3y ago
  Autodesk as an employer has fallen quite a bit from even a decade ago. Despite the culture of crabs in a bucket playing at empire building Bass' tenure was marked by generally employee friendly policies and a sincere passion behind some of their projects. The same definitely can't be said for the marketing dweebs that took over (and judging by Fusion they've ramped up their anti-customer initiatives too). The shift towards subscription based bullshit was essentially the start of the effort to oust Bass.
vxNsr 3y ago
Off topic but: currently needing to use autocad for a work project, any recommendations for learning autolisp or w/e the scripting language is? I was having trouble finding a good resource for this, seems like everyone just knows it and the only way to learn is to have good enough Google-fu to find the forum post that fulfills your criteria. And hope it’s not out of date.
inferiorhuman 3y ago
Right. See also Ochopod and OpenStack. Open source is the means to a promotion, nothing more, nothing less.

monuszero 3y ago

[current employee of Autodesk] Minor contributions to existing OSS are generally encouraged day-to-day by employees. There are also more strategic open source initiatives such as the USD stuff covered here. Many of us, especially in the research division, would love to put more code out there. (For example some tools that we use internally) The good news on this front is that there is now a sanctioned process for this to happen, and the attitude seems much warmer than when I joined a decade ago. I’m personally involved in trying to open source some of my own work in the robotics domain, and have been pleasantly surprised with the response.