Original image I created for my instructables.com profile. (2007)
An excerpt from the announcement:
"Instructables will still be the same site you love: we’ll keep the Instructables name and URL, the whole team is staying on, our policies haven’t changed, you still hold copyright to your projects, we’ll still run awesome contests, and the Robot isn’t going anywhere. However, we’ll now have the resources to make some improvements to the site I know our authors and community will love. Autodesk gives us the scale and support to grow and improve Instructables, build some great apps, and continue our mission of creating a positive impact on the world. Everyone on the Instructables team will become Autodesk employees, but we'll still wear our Robot t-shirts with pride."
Here's what I had to say on their feedback page:
"I've been using Autodesk's free student software trials for three years now without a hitch (AutoCAD, Inventor). These have helped me greatly with projects and presentations in college and Inventor is my favorite 3D design software because of this. However, these free services aren't available to most adult users and would be too costly for hobby budgets. Seeing as the Instructables community is primarily open source, I don't see how Autodesk would increase sales by dominating the site's ad space.
As far as I can tell, the site doesn't have any issues that require Autodesk software to fix. I really hope there aren't any changes to the website. What does Autodesk have to contribute(besides money)? Maybe a Flash 3D viewing window for .ipt or .dwg files but that's all I can come up with.
What will happen if someone published a new hack or piece of software that would divert sales away from Autodesk? Before, advertisers had no say in what could be published, but now Austodesk has the potential to personally ban any user they deem unsatisfactory.
Do not change the editor.
Do not take away free features.
Do not integrate the Autodesk Design Community.
Do not increase ad space.
Do not add new membership requirements.
Do increase the staff's project budget.
Do add more sponsored contests.
Do continue to support open source, free information, and educational hacking.
Bottom line: If Autodesk gets any control over the community, it will be detrimental to the spirit of Instructables and open source. In the event that instructables.com becomes a restrictive environment, we'll simply stop contributing."
As you can tell, I'm not entirely convinced that this is an improvement. Instructables was the one thing that convinced me to share my work online. It gave me permission to engineer and learn through experimentation. I'd hate to see it fall to big business.
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