kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Brian Sidebotham <brian.sidebotham@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 30 September 2011 09:05, Javier Serrano
<javier.serrano.pareja@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 8:44 PM, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> The gEDA project will not take this lying down.  I suggest we give serious attention soon
>> to writing conversion programs from all of their formats.  It's weird having to think
>> about competing here.  But I have been playing this game in the software private sector
>> for 30 years, and know that being able to provide a conversion path for datafiles from the
>> competing tool into yours is critical to gaining market share.
>
> I don't like to think of this as competition. We just need a tool (at
> least one) that will be on par with non-open tools in terms of
> features and quality. Hopefully many of the things we develop can be
> used by gEDA and viceversa. The concept of competition applies well to
> situations where you're figting for a scarce resource, much less so
> here, I think. The foss-pcb mailing list embodies this quite well. You
> have people from Kicad, gEDA and others discussing what's good for a
> FOSS PCB design tool. My guess is that both Kicad and gEDA have/will
> soon have so many contributors that the limiting factor will be how to
> coordinate things. So they will not be competing for developers. What
> else could they be competing for?
>
>> These conversion tools could be external, and written in a language of your choice.
>
> This is a perfect example of things that should be done in
> collaboration with the gEDA people.
>
> Now, I would like to give some context:
>
> - We are not "CERN" but a part of it (the ones pushing for Open Source
> Hardware). CERN is very big. There will be people who stay with
> non-open tools. Hopefully with time their case will become less
> compelling.
> - I would really like the foss-pcb list to remain this neutral meeting
> place for all sorts of FOSS PCB tool developers. Whoever is interested
> in this broader context can find more information here:
> http://www.ohwr.org/projects/ohr-meta/wiki/Foss-pcb
> - We are very willing to play first domino and this is in fact already
> happening. People from the Facebook Open Compute project and others
> are in contact with us to collaborate on this. I hope the Open
> Hardware workshop next week can be used to discuss with some key
> actors and come up with a good plan. BTW, if someone wants to attend,
> registration closes today! See
> http://www.ohwr.org/projects/ohr-meta/wiki/OHWorkshop
> - For the time being, I have asked a company
> (http://www.signalsoftware.es/) to turn the feature wish list in the
> foss-pcb pages into a work package list for Kicad, so that people who
> want to lend a hand and don't know where have a list of work packages
> to choose from. I will of course make sure whatever is done by us or
> our collaborators is contributed in the standard way, respecting all
> the non-written rules of FOSS.
>
> I look forward to collaborating with everyone in this list. Cheers!
>
> Javier

This looks very exciting indeed. I'll take a look at the CERN OHL
later on tonight, hopefully it'll be something I can move my projects
to. Open Hardware needs something like CERN behind it to drive it
forward as well as the FOSS community.

With the advent of cheaper and cheaper home production machines like
CNC mills and 3D printers, open hardware is a revolution waiting to
happen. I can't wait for it to really take off.

I've just got back to my PC after a long weekend away (in glorious
sunshine here in the UK!!) and I've missed the opportunity to register
- what a shame! Grenoble is an easy flight from London and this looks
like a very interested event.

Dick and Jean-Pierre will do KiCad proud I'm sure. Good luck to all
involved, I hope it's a really productive event.

Best Regards,

Brian.