Creators have had it good with computers for a long time! Anyone remember Blue Moon Rendering Tools? BMRT was, at some point, better than Renderman .. prompting Pixar's lawyer brigade to go nuts and try to destroy it at some point .. so its kind of fun to see Pixar go full circle and come around to the free-for-artists way of things.
Matt Pharr, a founding member of that Exluna/BMRT crew that Pixar sued, and also one of the authors of the seminal Physically Based Rendering book tweeted this about Pixar's announcement of the all new physically based Renderman:
"First they try to sue you into oblivion, claiming it unimaginable that you wrote a renderer yourself without having stolen from theirs, and then 12 years later they write a new renderer with your ideas at the foundation. #theironyitburns"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Rendering_Tools