I swear, the companies in 3d software tooling adjacent industries must almost _want_ Blender to eat their lunch.
If affected companies banded together to pay in even 10% of what they currently pay Autodesk towards working with the blender foundation, we'd see it all in FOSS within 2 years.
Coordination problems are hard though. Only time will tell how hard people will actually push back.
CAD is fundamentally different from mesh-based 3D. You’d have to start from scratch. Plus the physics simulations are serious, not video game stuff. There’s also a minefield of patents to contend with. Nor can you forge your own path if you want people’s models to be compatible (and I mean mathematically, not just file formats).
It’s not even just patents, most of these software share solid modelling kernels. The Siemens tools mostly use ParaSolid. Dassault’s use CGM. There’s all sorts of inter licensing deals in this space.
I'm not suggesting that they are ready for professional use, just that I don't think the Autodesk moat is as deep as some might assume, and that if there was a concerted community effort Blender could accomplish those tasks.
If affected companies banded together to pay in even 10% of what they currently pay Autodesk towards working with the blender foundation, we'd see it all in FOSS within 2 years.
Coordination problems are hard though. Only time will tell how hard people will actually push back.