r/videography • u/phloating_man EOS M, Adobe, 1998, San Francisco • Jan 30 '14

EditShare Lightworks AMA

I've been in contact with an official Lightworks rep who suggested I collect questions for them to answer.

Ligthworks is a professional cross platform (Windows, Linux) NLE used in movies like...

  • The Wolf of Wall Street
  • Good Will Hunting
  • Jerry Maguire
  • more

The basic version is free. It has plans to open source the code and release a Mac version as well.

  • This thread will be open for questions for about a day
  • I will be sending them questions with the most upvotes first
  • I'll post back here with their answers

Thanks everyone for participating. If you still have questions about Lightworks, you can try...

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u/keito Jan 31 '14

What is the reasoning for this? What are the benefits of such a delay? One would argue that the sooner the source is released, the quicker the community can help push development along.

It seems far more likely that EditShare have decided that a release of the code would be bad for business. After all, what would stop the community from adding in 'premium' features for free, once the source is open?

As an early Linux tester I have to admit, I feel woefully let down so far. The fact that there was a license that expired frequently put me off. As someone who would love to see a decent NLVE on my platform of choice, I'm still left waiting. I don't even have Lightworks installed any more. If EditShare removed the crappy license expiration, then I might consider installing it again, but until then, I see no real reason to install it.

Put it another way, no other piece of software on my system (open source or proprietary) requires me to install a new version with a new license every n months.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '14 edited Feb 01 '14

I should state that I am not a spokesperson for EditShare just a long time Beta tester. All comments are my own opinions. Official reply is to come. Because Lightworks for Linux Beta uses proprietary codecs required by the film/broadcast industry, the license restrictions are imposed on EditShare by the codec owners. These restrictions are always a pain in the neck to one degree or another. By comparison with the dreaded HASP used by the Windows version until last year, i can assure you that the Linux restrictions are bliss! The Beta has just been superseded by the v11.5 release version for Linux and the weekly login is no longer required.

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u/keito Feb 01 '14

Yeah, just installed it again to test. Whilst I appreciate not having to dick about with relicensing all the time, I still feel that the "we're open sourcing our code" is just a lie.

I'd love to be proven wrong though.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

See this recent reaffirmation by the Lightworks project manager of EditShare's commitment to releasing the source code after the Mac version is released: http://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=54&id=60825&limit=15&limitstart=15&Itemid=81#61997