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For 30 years Autodesk took an increasingly larger and larger share of the 3d modeling market. Over time they became complacent and users were locked in. Prices

by bentt 1y ago

For 30 years Autodesk took an increasingly larger and larger share of the 3d modeling market. Over time they became complacent and users were locked in. Prices only went up. Meanwhile Blender was the most viable free oss alternative, but it was obtuse and lacked features… Until it didn’t. Version 2.8 of Blender unlocked a latent avalanche of adoption. It has only snowballed since then. Autodesk is checkmated in the long run. So when will a similar thing happen with Desktop Linux? Who will do it? Can it be done?

credit_guy 1y ago
> So when will a similar thing happen with Desktop Linux? Who will do it? Can it be done? Even if this happens, it would not matter for Microsoft. Windows is now almost a rounding error for them. Here's their revenue and operating income for the fiscal year 2024 [1]. There are 3 categories, with fancy names, but they mean roughly 1. Office, 2. Azure, 3. Windows+Xbox+LinkedIn+Copilot. The profit for the first two (combined) was a bit more than $90B. For the last category, it was a bit less than $20B, and Windows is roughly a third of it. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2024-q4/segment-revenues https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2024-q4...