Nerd Sniping Convinces Microsoft To Open Source 3D Movie Maker from 1995

Microsoft 3D Movie Maker was initially launched in 1995. The program allowed you to place 3-D objects within environments to create films. The software looks dated now, but it was a fun way to play around with 3-D effects back in the day. Now, the classic program has been open sourced by Microsoft. From a report: It appears that a 3D Movie Maker enthusiast was able to convince Microsoft's Scot Hanselman to open source the software by "nerd sniping." That term refers to when a person claims something cannot be done with the aim of someone proving them wrong. "What's the best way to get something done? Nerd-snipe an engineer and tell them it can't be done. I HATE being told something can't be done," said Microsoft's Scott Hanselman.

Hey! Microsoft!`

[DarkRookie2]

I know something that can't be done. Your ability to make a UI.
You guys sure can't do that right.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

You know it's really rude to point out a person's obvious faults in public. You're short, you're fat, you're ugly, you can't make a user interface that isn't a fucking hot mess, etc.

Re:

[Catvid-22]

Microsoft "can" make a decent UI. Only they don't know. So they turn their gold into garbage, until some sensible designer decides to turn it back into silver.

Re:

[Bu11etmagnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Blast from the Past!

[nealric]

I remember using 3D movie maker for school projects circa 1996. Sort of surprised that there aren't more widely available products like today it that allow the easy creation of computer animated films. Uploading from your phone would certainly be a lot easier than recording the video on cassette tape like I had to!

Blender

[kyoko21]

Blender has entered the chat.

Re:

[Merk42]

I don't think anyone is honestly thinking this unchanged program from 1995 is trying to be a competitor to Blender.

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[thegarbz]

Blender has entered the chat.

You think you're at all relevant in this thread? Go home Blender you're drunk.

No 3D Movie Maker is nothing like Blender, and wasn't even attempting to be a competition to the actual competition of Blender back in the day.

Re:

[Bu11etmagnet]

> Blender has entered the chat.

Frog has entered the blender.

Freehand

[Phact]

Can someone Nerd Snipe Adobe into open sourcing the Amazing Macromedia Freehand [wikipedia.org] vector drawing tool?

Re:

[Samantha Wright]

Pretty sure you'd need a black arrow [fandom.com] for that.

Of course it was foone

[barlevg]

Man, weird that I had to dig through a bunch of layers before finding that the snipe tweet was from @foone. https://mobile.twitter.com/Foo... [twitter.com] (This is the guy that got Doom to run on a pregnancy test)

Here's another link

[Catvid-22]

I don't know. Maybe this is important, too [github.com]?

Nerd snipe TrueSpace

[DigitAl56K]

Microsoft's bigger 3D sin was buying Caligari TrueSpace then killing it.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

I still use TrueSpace 3.1 (amazingly still runs in Windows 7+) for small 3D projects (mostly character and object creation for games). I had no idea M$ is the reason for its demise. It's a great little 3D creation program. Started using TrueSpace back in the Windows 3.1 days.

Re:

[moogaloonie]

Yup. My first thought when I read this post. I did just learn from the trueSpace forum at www.united3dartists.com that there may be some proprietary code they are unable to open-source. That should not prevent them from decoupling that code and open-sourcing what they do have the right to release. Anyway, still hoping to see it eventually freed some day.

Scott Hanselman

[Bite The Pillow]

Scott Hanselman IA one of the few guys who get it. He's genuinely interested in making things better. Raymond Chen is the only other person with a public presence and a need to inform.

Reverse psychology

[ZiggyZiggyZig]

"Nerd sniping?" is that zoomerspeak for reverse psychology?

Re:

[yedragon]

I'm not sure if this is a legitimate example of the phenomenon, but the phrase is a reference to XKCD #356 [xkcd.com].

Re:

[piojo]

Nerd sniping refers to suddenly presenting an interesting problem to a nerd, which causes the nerd to freeze as he ponders, like deer freeze in headlights. The summary mischaracterized the term. Saying something can't be done is simply a challenge.

This can't be done either...

[bustinbrains]

Open sourcing Office and Windows. Those are two more things that can't be done.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Open sourcing Office and Windows. Those are two more things that can't be done.

You were not clear enough. Office currently qualifies for your statement, but Windows now doesn't, because parts of Windows ARE open-sourced by Microoft.

You have things like Calculator, File Manager, PowerShell and a few others.

So yes, Windows has not been completely open-sourced, but parts of it has been, and I've stretched your ambiguity further because I've included Windows 3.1 through Windows 10/11.

Re:

[Bu11etmagnet]

> Open sourcing Office and Windows. Those are two more things that can't be done.

I'm sure open sourcing Microsoft Bob is impossible :)

Yay.

[codebase7]

Now I can finally find all of the missing pages to the talent book!

Now if only someone would get the Nickelodeon version's assets to work with it.

Hey Scott Hanselman

[africanrhino]

You know what really can’t be done? Open source windows.. see .. literally nothing you can do about it

OS/2 ???

[martiniturbide]

What do I need to do to get the older OS/2 source code???