High-End Lightworks Video Editor Finally Says Why They Didn't Go Open-Source Yet

[ids1024]

Sounds like excuses and they are evaluating potential business options. I don't really fault them but I don't see why they cannot be honest about it. Perhaps they fear it shows disorganisation?

And this is after years of them not commenting at all on the fact that they had promised an open source version. This vague statement may be entirely true, and not just an excuse, but why has it taken so many years to just say this much?

[stormcrow]

And this is after years of them not commenting at all on the fact that they had promised an open source version. This vague statement may be entirely true, and not just an excuse, but why has it taken so many years to just say this much?

Legal and code spelunking takes money, time, and resources. The priority was never that high compared to the business of actually pulling in a profit. Put those things together and it will take years to sort things out, determine if any contractual obligations are still in effect, and if so if there are any ways of adequately replacing those libraries or purchased technologies.

Also, corporate officers rarely are specific because what they say can be used against them or the company if someone decides to bring a lawsuit. Or worse, can cause investigations in publicly traded companies - eg: Elon Musk.

[edwaleni]

They probably put it aside when they had other, more pressing, matters and it just never came up again since none of their customers cares if they're open source or not right up until someone mentioned it now that they porting it to Apple's new ARM SoCs.

You can expect similar news in the coming years where companies are evaluating / reevaluating partial/full open sourcing. Don't overthink it.

Exactly. A paying support customer needs a fix to finish a major studio project, or paying a developer to fix inconsistent code that won't generate a dime in additional revenue.

Lightworks should just give up on the notion and move on.

Boutique EFX houses are springing up everywhere using all of these commercial and FOSS tools. Just watch the end credits of Avengers: Endgame and you will get a clear idea of just how prolific they have become.

[ix900]

And this is after years of them not commenting at all on the fact that they had promised an open source version. This vague statement may be entirely true, and not just an excuse, but why has it taken so many years to just say this much?

Can also look at it as that Valve has them beat with time anyway. The people at Valve just couldn't figure out how to do what they wanted to do and just kept quiet over about 12 years. Some people choose not to talk and are annoyingly frustrating in that way.

[lyamc]

And this is after years of them not commenting at all on the fact that they had promised an open source version. This vague statement may be entirely true, and not just an excuse, but why has it taken so many years to just say this much?

It takes a long time to get the legality and technical requirements sorted out which already requires a lot of work. If you're trying to deliver software to a company who are trying to get their own work done, their downtime costs them money and the longer they are down the morebthry consider switching.

It is VERY difficult to decide to schedule time away from the larger projects for looking at how difficult it is to open source. That's assuming you are the boss.

Now imagine you find out just how difficult and develop a plan for getting that done and it's going to require 1000 hours combined. You can either pay someone for working 8 hours a day for half a year or have let's say 1 hour from a 10 person team for about the same amount of time.

Depending on what it is it can be very difficult or very expensive especially when it comes to legal things. You need to make sure that you aren't violating any NDA agreements from working with any pieces of software.

If you do it wrong, you destroy your bottom line and if that happens then you have to lay off some workers or just shut down completely if you get caught in a severe legal battle.


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The point I'm trying to make is that everyone here who are being overly ciritcal are just being toxic and should probably just not say anything if they have nothing good to say because they're so cynical that they are assuming the worst of people.

[kpedersen]

once they release it as open source any incentive to pay for the software goes out the window, someone wishing to use it could just download the source code and build it themselves.

What you suggest is piracy. Releasing the source code does not magically make something "free". In theory to a skilled reverse engineer, a compiled binary can happily be modified... does that mean they can just run all software without paying for it?

It is (IMO naive) views like this that is keeping the industry a little bit behind. Open-source should primarily be thought of as simply a distribution method to ensure customers not running Wintel can access (and thus purchase) your software.

At the same time, I do understand the "fear" of releasing source. Companies lose some amount of control. However this control is not really healthy in the first place and merely came as a "happy side effect" of computers not all having the same processor architecture and computer users being too unskilled to compile their own software.

[tildearrow]

Poor coding standards?...

My first project is open-source and it has even worse coding standards...

[MadeUpName]

The OSS crowd really needs to get the're collective heads out of their asses.

Shhhh! I hear trolls. Among the hundred other things you forgot to mention in your screed is that MS has jumped on the OS bandwagon. Don't forget it was ether Bill or Paul that said "You can't compete with free".

While it would probably be better than any of the existing OS NLEs and more open source is always a good thing, as some one that needs to get real work done I wouldn't move to LW from resolve even if LW was open source.

[Volta]

The OSS crowd really needs to get the're collective heads out of their asses.

What a narrow minded ignorant.

https://fund.blender.org/

[bug77]

And here, folks, is why stuff doesn't get open sourced: sloppy coding practices lead to messy code where no one can be sure putting it up in the open doesn't expose you to patent infringement, license violations and such.
That is why we don't have more open source stuff, not because companies are evil.