I dislike very much criticising anybody or anything publicly, but I cannot any more sit still.
Peter and Zack,
Reallusion might have a good legal team, with high class legal knowledge and abilities, but it seems to me they are without any business sense.
If we tie our future plans or even parts of it with the future of RA, then the prospects of lawyers forcing iClone to commit commercial suicide is something that needs to be addressed.
At a time, when newer and better softwares are coming up everyday, and every company is trying to increase their reach in every way possible, the RA lawyers seem to be on a spree trying to confine, strangle, and throttle most creative output possibilities of a tool solely and primarily meant for creative output. This is very self-conflicting.
Until now, the efforts had been to make all developers who use RA tools fall in line and align with company sales strategies. That is understandable, though its desirablity would vary from developer to developer. However, it is understandable, because it doesn't affect the commercial popularity of the software to the end user, the consumer who is king. And it ensures rather than endanger the survival of developers tied up with RA. (Though I believe any dreams,like I had, to become the world's richest man by developing iClone content, has been severely hampered).
With the new changes in the EULA of the end user, the lawyers are disregarding the fact that it is the consumer who is king, and trying to dethrone him/her. This spells commercial suicide. The past EULA was far more logical, though I wouldn't waste time going over it clause by clause.
What in effect, the EULA is saying is you can create, but if you use RA software, you cannot enjoy the fruits of your own creation. It is a tacit signal to consumers to look for fairer pastures ( I am surprised that they also did not give the list of current free software which render animation as fast as iClone and with much higher quality output from models and scenes having millions of polygons. I know the list but would not mention in this post for I am not RA's lawyer and wouldn't want to scuttle the prospects of this brilliant software with so many possiblities that are now being lost).
The restriction upon selling video footage in video stocks, of images in clips, now spells a death blow to iClone end-usage. They could have asked that in such productions it always be acknowledged that iClone has been used in part or whole of the production. That would have increased the popularity, visibility, and reach of iClone without scuttling creativity and also maintaining and enhancing the interests of Reallusion. But no, your lawyers (Are they in the pay of other competitor companies, I wonder?) are out for the blood of iClone and iClone consumers, and all they want is to reduce the use and visibility of iClone.
By finally reducing the entire viability of using iClone for content production by the end user, RA's lawyers have successfully turned a professional software to a plaything of casual hobbyists, and turned a "movie machine" to one that produces movies only for home and personal enjoyment. In a highly competitive field where other software hold out the prospects of turning a hobby into a living, RA's lawyers are carefully closing that market to iClone. Hope sells better and fetches a higher price than actual things (ask the politicians), but the hope of doing something with iClone is now being stamped out methodically.
This chapter in iClone history (we do not want iClone itself to become history) would go down as THE GREAT CASTRATION OF CREATIVES BY LUNATICS.
I request the administration of Reallusion to compare the EULAs of Poser, Daz, Vue, and other similar software which have a highly successful market by yourselves and not trust everything to the lawyers. They do not possess business sense and do not see the world from your eyes.
Also check the history of every software company which tied up with Autodesk and ended up in being bought out. See what changes they made to their EULAs before they began to suffer such reduction in sales that they had to allow the takeover bids by Autodesk.
Regards
Surajit
Cloner's Cafe
Edited
15 Years Ago by
surajit