Company reliance on the "industry standard" software (thoughts?)

[KING OF THE DIRTY DANS]

I've noticed a trend of one piece of purpose built software usually dominates its comercial market

• Video/Photo editing = Adobe CC
• 3D modeling = Autodesk
• C family IDEs = Visual Studio Enterprise/Pro

Why don't more major companies use free alternatives to these softwares? (BlackMagic, Blender, Eclipse, ETC)

They can spend the money, to increase employee pay, increase benefits, company vacation, etc 

I'm curious what you guys think about this

[zlolslavez]

I think if the software is actually good, then it's worth paying for. And giving employees quality tools (software) to use is also a perk for them, and I don't think savings on software will ultimately net much more benefits for employees.

[colonel_mortis]

If it costs $500 for a licence for a year, that's about $2/work day. It doesn't take much of a workflow improvement for that to be a worthwhile investment for the company.

 

For IDEs, the big benefit is things like autocomplete (intellisense) and integrated support for git, test frameworks, etc.

[KING OF THE DIRTY DANS]

Just now, colonel_mortis said:

If it costs $500 for a licence for a year, that's about $2/work day. It doesn't take much of a workflow improvement for that to be a worthwhile investment for the company.

 

For IDEs, the big benefit is things like autocomplete (intellisense) and integrated support for git, test frameworks, etc.

Im just coming at it from 500 bucks times 300 or so employees. It adds up

[colonel_mortis]

2 minutes ago, KING OF THE DIRTY DANS said:

Im just coming at it from 500 bucks times 300 or so employees. It adds up

$500 * 300 = $150,000 per year, which is a lot of money for you or I. However, if those 300 employees are earning an average of say $30k per year, the company's salary expenses are $30,000 * 300 = $9,000,000 per year. For a company, that $150,000 cost is not particularly large, and means that they get more work out of their employees (and more work per $ than hiring more employees to make up for the deficit).

[KING OF THE DIRTY DANS]

Just now, colonel_mortis said:

$500 * 300 = $150,000 per year, which is a lot of money for you or I. However, if those 300 employees are earning an average of say $30k per year, the company's salary expenses are $30,000 * 300 = $9,000,000 per year. For a company, that $150,000 cost is not particularly large, and means that they get more work out of their employees (and more work per $ than hiring more employees to make up for the deficit).

That makes more sense, thanks for doing the math

[Mira Yurizaki]

10 minutes ago, KING OF THE DIRTY DANS said:

Why don't more major companies use free alternatives to these softwares? (BlackMagic, Blender, Eclipse, ETC)

Could be several reasons:

• It's what everyone else uses. As a employer you could potentially limit your pool of employees by not going with an industry standard.
• Standardization of workflow. It's likely none of these alternative software suites have the same workflow as what's being used already. The cost to retrain everyone to a different workflow may not be worth it. It's not just the fact you have to retrain everyone, but they may not be producing anything useful while they're being retrained and the time lost to make up for the inevitable user errors on the way can stretch things out.
• Lack of support. Companies like a level of support that they can rely on. Free software tends to lack that level of support. Or it comes in an equally expensive package.
• The free alternative just isn't that great to begin with. A common complaint I hear about people who do image editing is GIMP is actually a terrible piece of software to use from a usability standpoint. No amount of money saved will overcome the time lost trying to actually use the program.

[Drak3]

32 minutes ago, KING OF THE DIRTY DANS said:

Why don't more major companies use free alternatives to these softwares?

Paid alternatives are usually better. And by a wide enough margin to justify corporate use of them but narrow enough that indie/small companies and hobbiests avoid them.

[Enderman]

Solidworks is much more common than autodesk.

[RoseLuck462]

I’m sure the company can write off those software licenses as business expenses and lower their overall taxes.

 

I’m not sure if that is how any of it works though 

[SenKa]

Standards are standards for a reason, but I would argue that Final Cut Pro is better than Premier Pro in every way.

[Drak3]

Just now, SenpaiKaplan said:

Standards are standards for a reason, but I would argue that Final Cut Pro is better than Premier Pro in every way.

You'd be wrong. Premiere can be ran on more systems.

[KING OF THE DIRTY DANS]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

You'd be wrong. Premiere can be ran on more systems.

There are thousands of Mac based AV places tho

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, KING OF THE DIRTY DANS said:

There are thousands of Mac based AV places tho

And there are thousands that aren't.

[SenKa]

3 hours ago, Drak3 said:

You'd be wrong. Premiere can be ran on more systems.

I was referring more to its more intuitive UI and highly superior software optimization, but.... yeah. FCP is macOS only. Will give you that.

 

I have never worked at an AV job where they didn't use macOS for their editing, but i have worked at some that used Premier on macOS. I wanted to tear my hair out every time.

[Feranoks]

Not to mention the support that comes with many of those. If a large company buys a license for one of those softwares, it's more then likely that if any problems occur with that software the developer would give fast support.

 

Now most of the free software alternatives are opensource. Sometimes they are used in companies, but heavily modified for their custom needs.