kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Seth,

Best of luck on your new endeavor.  This will be a great service for
users who have shied away from KiCad due to the lack of commercial
support.  Professional designers cannot use that as an excuse any more.
 I think this will be a win for you personally and for the project.

Cheers,

Wayne

On 9/18/19 4:45 PM, Seth Hillbrand wrote:
> Hi KiCad Folks-
> 
> I wanted to publicly give people a heads up about the formation of the
> KiCad Services Corporation (KiPro), a Kicad-specific support company. 
> We started in June with a soft-launch and have found a significant level
> of interest (hooray!).  We're now fully operational and looking forward
> to contributing more to KiCad going forward.
> 
> We've had a few questions from people in our community and I'd like to
> openly address them here.  
> 
> Q: What does KiPro do?
> A: We provide support contracts for companies that rely on KiCad.  These
> are non-public bug reports and support tickets for companies and
> professionals working on proprietary designs or who need guaranteed
> support levels.  Companies can get their questions answered and bugs
> fixed without needing to publicly disclose their designs.  We also offer
> dedicated feature development.
> 
> Q: Any relation to WIT (the company that employs Wayne Stambaugh)?
> A: Not at this time except that we are both working toward the same goal
> of open-source hardware development models.
> 
> Q: Does KiPro share resources with KiCad?
> A: We do not take donations from KiCad or CERN.  We look forward to
> providing funding to support KiCad activities in the future.
> 
> Q: Will KiPro divert resources from the KiCad community?
> A: While some businesses may choose to purchase a KiPro support
> subscription instead of donating through CERN, this is likely to be a
> minority as the KiPro subscriptions and contracts are payment in return
> for services and not donations.  Additionally, the KiCad Services
> Corporation is chartered to support the free and open development of
> KiCad, so funds in excess of operating expenses are used to support
> full-time developers, testers and documentation writers.  It is our goal
> for the additional KiCad awareness and activity we provide to increase
> the total level of charitable contributions KiCad receives through CERN.
> 
> Q: Does KiPro or its clients direct KiCad development?
> A: No.  All bug-fixes and documentation developed by KiPro employees
> will be submitted as patches to the appropriate mailing lists for public
> discussion.  Any feature development will be proposed and outlined on
> the kicad-developers list and be agreed to by the lead developer team
> prior to our work.  We serve as an intermediary and accelerant to
> businesses looking for specific KiCad features, ensuring that features
> are both inline with long-term KiCad development as well as
> incorporating feedback from the broader community.
> 
> Q: Is this a non-profit (501(c)3) organization?
> A: No.  KiCad Services Corporation is a California Corporation with the
> mission to advance the development and uptake of the KiCad software
> package as an open source system.
> 
> 
> Please feel free to raise any additional questions or concerns you might
> have and I'll do my best to address them.
> 
> 
> Regards-
> 
> 	
> 
> Seth Hillbrand
> 
> Chief Technologist
> 
> KiCad Services Corporation
> 
> Twitter Twitter <https://twitter.com/KiProEDA> 	  	LinkedIn LinkedIn
> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/kicad/about> 	 
> 
> 	  	  	  	
> 
> 	+1 530 302 5483 <tel:+15303025483> | +1 212 603 9372 <tel:+12126039372>
> 
> 	www.kipro-pcb.com <https://www.kipro-pcb.com/>
> 	Davis, CA
> 
> 
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