Autodesk Acquires Alias

eggegg is one of many readers to write to tell us that "Autodesk, of AutoCAD and 3dsmax fame, is reporting that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alias, makers of Maya and MotionBuilder. Will Autodesk use the inherited expertise and codebase to finally develop their product line for the platforms most of their customer base would prefer, or does this mean the end of development of Alias products on OSX and Linux?"

Comments

Re:End of the Line

[BrynM]

...there'll be crazy anti-piracy attached to all the aquired products.

As a registered Maya user, I can tell you that there already is. Usually it's FlexLM, which gets bound to your hardware (or can run on a license server) or a bonafide hardware dongle. No changes expected there. Alias is just as careful (paranoid) as Audtodesk.

Re:The slippery slope for apple started years ago

[jcr]

Umm.. The problem with your scenario is that you're ignoring how FCP is eating Premiere and Avid's lunch. Apple's selling enormous FCP/Xsan/Shake/Xserve/SXserve raid packages every day. As for Maya, Autodesk is in business to make money, not to throw away huge revenue streams just to spite Steve Jobs. Maya will stay on the Mac, unless Apple ships an app that tops it.

-jcr