I've been attached to the Blender community since 1998 or so (had it running on Irix at one point, and still have one of the original manuals).
The slight rise of it, but mainly the consolidation of Maya, 3DS Max and Softimage all under the Autodesk roof has been curious to watch. (It's a more extreme variant of the stagnation resulting from Adobe's now dominance of DTP, especially after effectively killing Freehand). What was a space in the mid 90s where software would cost tens of thousands per seat has experienced massive decline, despite the growth in consumers of end product. Those historically high barriers to entry protected the VFX studios of the era, granting them a degree of stability they haven't had since about 2000.
There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I have no idea what it is.
The slight rise of it, but mainly the consolidation of Maya, 3DS Max and Softimage all under the Autodesk roof has been curious to watch. (It's a more extreme variant of the stagnation resulting from Adobe's now dominance of DTP, especially after effectively killing Freehand). What was a space in the mid 90s where software would cost tens of thousands per seat has experienced massive decline, despite the growth in consumers of end product. Those historically high barriers to entry protected the VFX studios of the era, granting them a degree of stability they haven't had since about 2000.
There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I have no idea what it is.