kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

The KiCad policy on file format compatibility is that we will always be
backwards compatible.  There is no guarantee of forward compatibility.
There is really no reason for us to do this because as Brian mentioned,
KiCad cannot hold your designs hostage by forcing you to pay for an
upgrade.  It also prevents the file parser and formatter code from
becoming a huge mess of version tests to ensure compatibility.

Cheers,

Wayne

On 3/1/2019 10:04 AM, Brian Piccioni wrote:
> For what it is worth I believe " the forced upgrade path that all the
> commercial vendors use" is a commercial decision to force new license sales
> and/or give value to maintenance contracts. This has a negative impact on
> users with older versions who are forced to upgrade, which costs them money.
> 
> I don't think it is as much of an issue for Kicad users because the software
> is free. 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kicad-developers
> <kicad-developers-bounces+brian=documenteddesigns.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> On Behalf Of Seth Hillbrand
> Sent: March 1, 2019 9:17 AM
> To: cedric.dewijs@xxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] Processing older versions (topic split from
> v6 Upgrade)
> 
> Am 2019-03-01 01:28, schrieb cedric.dewijs@xxxxxxxxxx:
>> How does an earlier version of Kicad handles a file that has been 
>> created by a newer version of Kicad?
> 
> It doesn't.  And it can't between major releases (e.g. 4-5, 5-6)
> 
>> Altium opens files that have been created by a newer version, and 
>> warns the user. I use an older version of Altium than my co worker and 
>> so far we did not have issues yet. I can copy and paste from his 
>> designs to my designs without problems.
> 
> I don't anticipate anyone wanting to support this kind of behavior in KiCad.
> Altium has separate departments for developers and technical support.  We
> don't.
> 
>> My main motivation to let the user continue to use older version of 
>> the file format in newer versions of Kicad is to prevent the forced 
>> upgrade path that all the commercial vendors use. This boils down to 
>> the question: Do we want to force the entire team to upgrade to a the 
>> same version of Kicad if they collectively work on the same files?
> 
> We don't have the person-hours to provide support for multiple versions. 
>   We don't force people to upgrade but we also don't have enough time in the
> day to deal with the extra problems that come from the kind of teamwork you
> are describing.
> 
> -Seth
> 
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