| Our issue on Coming October 1: Autodesk's Future is Different (upFront.eZine #894) was the most-read one over the last 12 months. And so we got a lot of letters from readers, which we share with you here. A reminder that statements are the opinions of the holders, and are not necessarily shared by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. and its staff. Letters are edited for brevity and clarity.
- - -
|
|
You have reminded all of us that, as ADSK is publicly-traded capitalist company, the only reason Autodesk does anything is because it will make them a profit. Profit is a great thing, but when we, the paying users, are continually shortchanged for the sake of shareholder benefit (profit), we ought to start feeling ripped off and get mad enough to become shareholders ourselves. We are not helpless sheep who can do nothing to stop this behavior. Autodesk’s corporate activities are not driven by some inexorable tectonic force over which mere humans have no say. Buy stock, and your voice will be heard. If we collectively buy enough stock, then we, the paying users, will dictate the terms.
If 1,000,000 suffering, paying users each buy just two shares per month (today about $60 each), in just one year we collectively will own 24 million shares, enough for two seats on the board. After three more years at that rate, we will own 96 million shares, and be well on our way to full control of the company, which currently has about 240 million shares outstanding.
We should form a new AOGI -- Autodesk Owner’s Group International -- whose ultimate goal is to make Autodesk a user-owned company. From there, we can change the release cycle from every year to every four years, and demand that the software work as advertised.
Be warned, however, that the stock will no longer pay cash dividends. Indeed, investors may not see any increase in the value of their shares after the stupid subscription ("leech") business model is gone. The dividend will instead be awarded through lower levels of aggravation at work, higher productivity, fewer hardware upgrades, and less re-training.
It may be inevitable that a user-owned Autodesk become a non-profit. This saves tremendously on taxes, and Autodesk would finally become a good corporate citizen.
Many folks are intimidated by the thought of taking over Autodesk, but they need to realize that it is the nature of a corporation to simply keep charging more, until it starts losing customers to competitors (which is how they determine what the market will bear). Autodesk’s strategy has been to buy up as many competitors as possible to minimize the possibility of losing customers to them.
Thanks as always for your helpful reporting.
- Peter Lawton
The editor replies: While your idea has merit, I think the flaw is that most users do not care, because they are the customer; someone else buys the software for them.
- - -
Activist investors are why some companies are issuing non voting shares.
- Dan M (via WorldCAD Access)
- - -
Wow! Fantastic article! I know I send a lot of kudos, but this one really stands out. Nice work! My gut feeling on this is that with such a preemptive expectation of dread about these three new board members, they would certainly expect a knee-jerking downside on the stock price. Any time bean counters toss a blanket on a creative environment, it leads to departing staff and sinking morale. All of this leads me to suspect they are really shorting the stock. I smell something bad in this.
- David Stein
The editor replies: Clash-of-the-Titans stuff, as there are two forces at play here:
- Activist investors, who want to make Autodesk into something its executives don't want.
- Executives, who want to make Autodesk into something its customers don't want.
- - -
Just saw the write up. It's a perfect piece of reporting.
- R. T.
- - -
The truth is customers have been maneuvered, bit by bit, into a situation where they have no choice: continually pay corporate welfare, or have no access to CAD/CAM tools. Really, there needs to be a class-action pushback on these. The trouble is most users are far too passive about their consumer rights and don't offer an organized opposition, so corporations push it to the max and write their own one-sided rules.
-Neil Larsen (via WorldCAD Access)
- - -
By the way, really great and fascinating article on Autodesk you wrote this week!
- Bill Gordon
|
|
Article continues following this advertisement...
...article now continues.
|
|
|
So glad I did not succumb to the temptation a few years ago to switch over to AutoCAD Inventor. Given that Autodesk has given up on providing products that its customers actually want, and that the new sort-of-owners apparently plan on just looting the company, it sounds like they are a dead duck. I'm sure they will be successful in driving the price of the stock upward, so they can cash out before it falls apart.
The most valuable thing that they have, which is the ability to create engineering software that people will happily pay for and use, is still in there somewhere. Maybe the end result of this will be that those people will go back to doing that. Seems like an ideal time for some enterprising outfit to hire themselves some good, experienced software developers, free them from the burden of trying to support a massive marketing and customer-looting bureaucracy, and become the dominant supplier of CAD software by selling a good tool for what it's worth.
- Jess Davis
The editor replies: Autodesk's direction is a puzzle, given that several of the execs are engineers and other kinds of professionals.
- - -
Dmitry Ushakov translated your recent post [into Russian] athttp://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=18458.
- David Levin
- - -
Institutional investors now on the Autodesk board say all we need to know as customers. Divorced from prudent planning and R&D for the future, since that will become an "unnecessary" expense to creating immediate profits things will at the least stagnate. What I figure will be their undoing will be when it is decided for Autodesk by these hostile investor types to end permanent seats entirely and to renege on the promise made to support them forever. Loot and plunder and make captive your customers and then make their expenses go through the roof.
The breakeven point for permanent seats at full price plus maintenance at the current levels is just under five years for Inventor Pro HSM. At the end of 15 years, subs will have cost $22,000 more at today's prices, prices that are sure to go up once the captives have been contained. Many people in the past never did pay full price (as deals could be made with Autodesk), and so the true break-even point for lots of buyers was probably three years or less.
I am laughing at the latest and greatest offer from Autodesk to expired Inventor seat holders from 2015 and back: cash in your permanent seat for three years subscription at the cost of a one-year. Whoohoo, and enter the world of never-stopping paying whatever they ask in the future, because you gave up your choice.
Trouble in investor paradise is coming. I really hate to see this happen to Autodesk, especially since they have acquired so much top-drawer CAM programing. The future was theirs to give away, or take the market over, and I think the investor piranhas have determined which it will be now.
- Dave Ault (via WorldCAD Access)
- - -
Wow. That’s eye- opening to me. Loved the article, especially so since my specialty is AutoCAD customization (using mostly old-school methods).
- P. R. |
|
Opencartis has a new version of Spatial Manager for AutoCAD (2008-2017), BricsCAD (V13-V16), and stand-alone desktop that accesses background maps from OpenStreetMap, Bing, MapBox, and so on. V3.1 of the software lets you design and edit the structure that stores data attached to objects, and manages tables and fields. There are new tools to attach, detach, and select data; data attached to the objects through xdata or eeds is no longer read-only.
Download demo versions from http://www.spatialmanager.com/downloads/ |
|
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. In return, you receive our 56-page whitepaper "MobileCAD is Reaching Maturity," free and unavailable from anywhere else.
Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through  PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these:
Or you can mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.
|
|
"Science research is respected and uses confusing jargon; so if I use confusing jargon, my research is respectable science."
- David Burge |
|
|
|
Comments