kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[xarx@xxxxxx]

Hello,

a good topic and good ideas, in my opinion. Though it should be the core
developers who should say that.

A few weeks ago I was performing my own small research in what EDA tools are
available. I was looking for a schema_drawing-simulator-pcb_creator all-in-one
app. And found none (free). I was playing a lot especially with QUCS and eSim
(previously Oscad). Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seemed to me that the
development in QUCS almost ceased, leaving the application in unfinished state
with simulation stability problems. And eSim (which is basically a KiCad
wrapper) adds very little functionality to KiCad, but creates a completely new
project manager with very restricted functionality and a lot of bugs.

And here I'm coming to what you were writing about: All three projects (QUCS,
eSim and KiCad) seem to suffer with lack of people willing to contribute. I
agree with you that mutual cooperation could help all three projects,
especially in the problem of lacking man-power. In particular, I was wondering
why eSim went its own way instead of by contributing to KiCad. My suspicion is
that one of the reasons may be the initial rejection by the core team
developers to any unsolicited changes. I don't want to criticise that, I'm
just stating that this can be seen in the history of many patches in the
bug-tracker, where many suggestions were initially rejected, and only after a
long discussion they found their way to the KiCad build.

The question is - who will be the people driving the changes? This is a free
project, more than that - it uses GPL. And that's the reason why the
development goes the way it does. On of the KiCad developers said in a
discussion, that he is contributing to KiCad not make the word better, but to
make it suit his needs. And I completely understand that... :-(

To be a little constructive: Your suggestions are good, but there has to be
someone who takes care of them. And any such changes need an action plan/a
roadmap. Like this one:
http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki/WorkPackages. (I have no idea how
is CERN KiCad related to this KiCad.) Because it's hard to contribute to a
project that has no idea of the way it wants to go.

        Martin.

----- Původní zpráva -----
Odesílatel: timofonic timofonic <timofonic@xxxxxxxxx>
Příjemce: "xarx@xxxxxx" <xarx@xxxxxx>
Datum: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 04:12:42 +0100
Předmět: About collaboration, simulation, documentation, organisation,
usability and documentation (Was: Re: [Kicad-developers] Bug #1511552 - Fixes
to Incorrect export of Spice net-list from EESchema)


> Hello
> 
> I'm just a lurker and still not started to contribute, but I have some
> ideas:
> 
> - Indian Institute of Technology Bombay: I see technological and
> educational institutions as potential contributors at this stage of
> development. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay developed the Oscad
> package and showed a very good attitude towards collaboration, I think they
> must go to FOSSDEM and talk very seriously about a long term collaboration
> plan.
> - Improving usability: I think UX should be taken under a very serious
> objective analysis by an independent group to make KiCad more popular,
> OpenUsability.org seems a good candidate. Old schoolers and some developers
> might resist to change, but KiCad's UX is one of the things that still make
> people uncomfortable to use it.
> - QUCS: It seems a great project with innovation in their core ideas. I
> think there should be some collaboration. It seems there are issues about
> SPICE models being copyrighted so they have to use script downloaders, this
> would make a future KiCad library with all components available in
> SPICE/Verilog-A a very hard challenge until solved.
> - Organization: Are there clear roles in KiCad? Wayne is the project
> manager and there are translators, that's all I know. Are there main or
> specific roles in the team? What about a fast voting process to take
> decisions? Are there a formal meritocratic core team?
> - Wiki: What about using a wiki for documentation? It provides an easier to
> use environment,  it can be customized for i18n and even parsing KiCad
> files to show them  as SVG if someone writes a plugin for it. The
> documentation could be exported and shipped in each release, too.
> 
> 
> 
> Relevant links:
> https://forum.kicad.info/t/simulating-kicad-schematics-in-spice/
> http://mithatkonar.com/wiki/doku.php/kicad/kicad_spice_quick_guide
> http://esim.fossee.in
> https://github.com/Oscad
> http://www.iitb.ac.in
> 
> Kind regards.
> 

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