The big announcement...

[Pangolin]

Hi guys,

You'll here more on our Facebook page, but today at Prolight & Sound we made a speech and discussed the news. It can be seen at the What's New at Pangolin page here:
http://www.pangolin.com/whatsnew.htm

Let us know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

William Benner

[JohnYayas]

Hi guys,

You'll here more on our Facebook page, but today at Prolight & Sound we made a speech and discussed the news. It can be seen at the What's New at Pangolin page here:
http://www.pangolin.com/whatsnew.htm

Let us know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

William Benner

Pangolin acquired Phoenix? That IS an interesting development. Feel free to correct what little knowledge I have of them but don't they use a version of EasyLase for hardware and an offshoot of LDS for software? There really hasn't been much talk about them on this side of the pond so I assume they must have been pretty relevant in Europe to be acquired.

[Bradfo69]

andyf97 just had a coronary


Humm... I own both. Wonder what that may bring in the future.

[chad]

Pangolin acquired Phoenix? That IS an interesting development. Feel free to correct what little knowledge I have of them but don't they use a version of EasyLase for hardware and an offshoot of LDS for software? There really hasn't been much talk about them on this side of the pond so I assume they must have been pretty relevant in Europe to be acquired.

My guess this is more about crushing competition like they did with la-studio.

Chad

[Pangolin]

Urban legend or misinformed opinion...

LAStudio was not "crushed". LAStudio was software which, before we acquired it, costed thousands of dollars, and once we acquired it, we gave it away for free for ten years. I'd hardly call that "crushing"... Once LAStudio was acquired by us, the developers lived better lives than they ever had before, and continue to do so 'til this very day. Many of the technologies developed in LAStudio were further improved, and offered to both past LAStudio and current Pangolin customers absolutely free (and continue to be offered for free too).

In the case of our acquisition of Phoenix, I see a similar thing happening. All Phoenix clients become a member of the Pangolin family and enjoy our renowned support and free updates for life (something they never actually enjoyed in the past because all Phoenix updates were paid updates). Certain Phoenix technologies will be re-worked and brought into the LD2000 and BEYOND family (again for free). Certain Pangolin technologies (for example Lasershow Converter 4D) may be brought into Phoenix if it's as easy to do as it was with Pangolin software (again, for free).

In the end, all clients are the real winner here, and I'd make the argument that the whole laser industry also wins. In the past, Phoenix developers spent a lot of time re-creating what Pangolin already had. I heard they most recently spent 1.5 years working on something to compete with our BEYOND 3D. Imagine if those guys would have spent 1.5 years doing something that nobody had done -- covering ground that none of us had covered? Imagine how much further the laser industry would be then?

Well that's our plan... Don't duplicate efforts -- don't re-invent the wheel. Instead, work on truly new ideas, technologies and techniques, which move the whole industry forward and which -- if our 27 year history repeats itself -- will be offered to clients for free.

The only way we "crush competition" is by offering great products, great support, great prices, and free software updates for life. Now THAT'S hard to compete with!

Best regards,

William Benner

[kiyoukan]

if you want inovation why not go open source?
and make the money off hardware and support.
with the right license on it alot of good could come of it.

[White-Light]

andyf97 just had a coronary

That was his favoured Pangolin alternative wasn't it?

Its a dark night in Romania.

if you want inovation why not go open source?
and make the money off hardware and support.
with the right license on it alot of good could come of it.

$4K for hardware or $4K for hardware + software, what's the difference?

The only difference I can see is that no-one would buy the hardware if they could get the software for free and stick it on eg an Easylase DAC.

It's hardly a good marketing strategy to bankrupt yourself.

Must admit, I never say this development coming. I heard rumours around the web of the announcement of a MAC version of Pangolin software not a takeover.

[sugeek]

My guess this is more about crushing competition like they did with la-studio.

Chad

What about RIYA hardware?
Pangolin has not concluded a similar deal with RIYA at this time. As a result, future sales of LAStudio software will only be made with Pangolin QM2000 hardware, or to existing users of Pangolin LD2000 who already have QM2000 hardware.

I assume you are not going to follow suit like you have in the past and only support Pangolin Hardware, killing hardware supported by prior versions of LAStudio? I have a Riya getting a copy of LAStudio would have been nice too bad.

-Adam

[Pangolin]

if you want inovation why not go open source?
and make the money off hardware and support.
with the right license on it alot of good could come of it.

We don't believe open source is a magic bullet for all applications. We dipped our toe in the open source world and did an experiment, for years offering two separate open source software projects for this industry and.... nothing. Laser Boy is Open Source as far as I know, but where has that gotten the industry at large? How many people have really been helped? How many award winning shows, etc... Based on the results of Laser Boy, that LFI Player, and a few other open source projects floating around along with our own two separate open source projects, we simply conclude that it is not workable for this particular industry.

And lastly, I take a look at a project like Blender, and I think to myself, yup, that's a poster boy for open source... It's a friggen mess...

Apple is not open source, and they seem to be doing just fine, and they are also pushing the envelope, coming up with technologies which really help a lot of people in the world, and which other companies generally copy.

Comparing the success of Apple against that of Blender, Laser Boy or any other open source alternative, and I'll take Apple products any day... (In fact Pangolin is now like an Apple haven...)

Hehe. No need to attach that. It's still up at our web site too... After all, we wrote it...

I assume you are not going to follow suit like you have in the past and only support Pangolin Hardware, killing hardware supported by prior versions of LAStudio.

The thing is that Pangolin is a very quality oriented company. We examined the RIYA hardware being offered at the time (a two-layer PCI board) and it just wasn't up to our quality standards (in addition to not actually meeting the official PCI spec itself). That particular board also had a reputation for randomly crashing PCs as well -- not something Pangolin would be proud to put our name on... At that particular time, we had discussions with Ihor about making an alternative board with 4 layers instead of 2, but, because 2 layer manufacturers were plentiful in Ukraine but 4 layer manufacturers were not, by the time Ihor would be able to make one, he calculated that the price would be equal to our QM2000 itself, so it was not deemed a worthwhile endeavor.

In the case of Phoenix, we will be evaluating their hardware -- and evaluating whether it makes sense to make their software run on our hardware, or our software run on their hardware. One determining factor will be quality. If our software does not look good on their hardware, then it will be a non-starter because we do not want to compromise our reputation for beautiful output quality. I can say the same on the flip side.

Another determining factor will be "security". All of our hardware has a serial number which we use to secure the software and allow our software to run without a dongle. If Phoenix hardware is secure enough, and also the output quality is good, then we will likely allow our software to run on it.

All of this will be evaluated in the coming weeks.




Bill

[heroic]

Actually, Bill, most of MacOS is open source. All of Android is open source, and is currently outselling the iPhone in every market.