Forum: Carrara


Subject: Where to Learn about Carraras fate?

Edgar opened this issue on Nov 24, 2000 ยท 13 posts


amaddr posted Sun, 03 December 2000 at 12:02 PM

You can't really drag in lawyers unless you have a source code escrow agreement in place between you and the original producers of the product. If you look at sites like http://www.componentsource.com (for VB developers; they sell ActiveX controls), you'll see the price for source code escrow services. In a nutshell, it means that if the company folds and your product relies on a product the company produced, then you can proceed with a phalanx of lawyers, blah, blah, blah. Alas, for those of us who had bought licenses for just about all the products MetaCreations produced, that's as far as it goes. They were just licenses. Sure, most companies are interested in keeping their customer base happy, but they aren't legally required to do so. If you read the license agreement that comes with just about every retail software package on the market, it boils down to: "Well, here's what we put out. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't, then it's your problem, not ours. Deal with it." I made the move over to trueSpace 4.3 last month. While Maya was my first choice, the practical limits of what was in my bank account made the decision for me. Sadly, it looks as if Carrara (and RayDream) are dead. The only glimmer of hope (other than coding a replacement myself) is the fact that Mark Zimmer and his cohorts do have a [miniscule] presence on the web: http://www.fractal.com. Let's hope they can break away from Corel (before it goes under) in time to survive financially.