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KiCad: A commitment to freedom

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Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#21

Post by secure »

adwn wrote: post #4

> Today, KiCad is considered a mature tool for the design of Printed Circuit Boards, featuring some capabilities that match or exceed those of costly proprietary alternatives. Two weeks ago, we evaluated whether we ditch our current proprietary EDA tools in favor of KiCad (my company designs and builds satellite electronics). We liked the user interface (it's not good, but better than the "professional" alternatives)…

> Preemptive reply to "why don't you contribute to it?": We thought about donating to the project, but the amount of money we spend on professional EDA tools per year would only buy us about 10 day of KiCad developer time (or in-house developer time) – by far not enough to fix all show-stoppers.

I’m not sure I follow. Are you saying you chose to not donate at all because you think your donation wouldn’t make any difference? In my experience, for many FOSS project standards, any contribution that can buy even a day of developer time would be considered huge. I’m sure KiCad would welcome any amount of donation :).

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#22

Post by db48x »

andmarios wrote: post #14

I visited the donation page and it costs about $500 for 1 developer to work on KiCad for 1 day. I do appreciate the transparency, but honestly I think my —small— donation would be used better in other free software projects unless I had some kind of vested interest in KiCad.

$500 a day is quite inexpensive for a competent developer. Perhaps you overestimate how far your donation will go.

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#23

Post by ZenoArrow »

secure wrote: post #21
adwn wrote: post #4

> Today, KiCad is considered a mature tool for the design of Printed Circuit Boards, featuring some capabilities that match or exceed those of costly proprietary alternatives. Two weeks ago, we evaluated whether we ditch our current proprietary EDA tools in favor of KiCad (my company designs and builds satellite electronics). We liked the user interface (it's not good, but better than the "professional" alternatives)…

> Preemptive reply to "why don't you contribute to it?": We thought about donating to the project, but the amount of money we spend on professional EDA tools per year would only buy us about 10 day of KiCad developer time (or in-house developer time) – by far not enough to fix all show-stoppers. I’m not sure I follow. Are you saying you chose to not donate at all because you think your donation wouldn’t make any diff…

No, that's not what was being said.

The options on the table are:

1. Pay the licencing fees for proprietary software that already does what you want it to do.

2. Sponsor development of an open-source project so that it will eventually do what you want it to do.

The argument being made is that, in the case of KiCad and this particular institution, option 1 was seen to be cheaper than option 2. In other words, it was deemed to be cheaper to pay the licence costs for the proprietary solution than it would be to pay a developer to make KiCad fit in with what they wanted.

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#24

Post by shoo »

secure wrote: post #21
adwn wrote: post #4

> Today, KiCad is considered a mature tool for the design of Printed Circuit Boards, featuring some capabilities that match or exceed those of costly proprietary alternatives. Two weeks ago, we evaluated whether we ditch our current proprietary EDA tools in favor of KiCad (my company designs and builds satellite electronics). We liked the user interface (it's not good, but better than the "professional" alternatives)…

> Preemptive reply to "why don't you contribute to it?": We thought about donating to the project, but the amount of money we spend on professional EDA tools per year would only buy us about 10 day of KiCad developer time (or in-house developer time) – by far not enough to fix all show-stoppers. I’m not sure I follow. Are you saying you chose to not donate at all because you think your donation wouldn’t make any diff…

it sounds like they'd be happy donating some amount comparable to the cost of current tools if the donations would result in the project being made usable for them.

it's not about it making a difference or not to the project, it's about it resulting in a sufficiently improved tool that they can use and get some ROI on

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#25

Post by alepper »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #19
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many projects across CERN do you think would use KiCad if it were somewhat knocked shape? Going OT but staying on this theme: It seems likely that public money across many governments is spent on closed source software for circuit design. Even probably across the projects in a single developed country I imagine it might be an economy to pay for the software to be modified. Such changes then being a gift to societ…

> "Academics (in the UK) is there any effort towards making free-libre software available through collaboration of different institutes?" I don't work in that field, so I can't answer your question directly, but I can pass on that EAGLE, which is probably KiCad's closest competitor, is available for free for academic institutions: https://cadsoft.io/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAGLE_(program)

Does this definitely extend to UK academics? They mention a .edu address is required, and I didn't hear back after applying with a .ac.uk address.

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#26

Post by kanzure »

shoo wrote: post #24
secure wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Preemptive reply to "why don't you contribute to it?": We thought about donating to the project, but the amount of money we spend on professional EDA tools per year would only buy us about 10 day of KiCad developer time (or in-house developer time) – by far not enough to fix all show-stoppers. I’m not sure I follow. Are you saying you chose to not donate at all because you think your donation wouldn’t make any diff…

it sounds like they'd be happy donating some amount comparable to the cost of current tools if the donations would result in the project being made usable for them. it's not about it making a difference or not to the project, it's about it resulting in a sufficiently improved tool that they can use and get some ROI on

Solution is dominant assurance contracts, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_as...

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#27

Post by ENadyr »

Have been using KiCad for PCB development for my hardware startup and overall happy with the choice.

Yes, they have made questionable UX decisions in development but then I've not tried an EDA tool that got the UX right. For those considering KiCad, but struggling to do it by themselves, I suggest you either take a Udemy course to show you the user flow. Or better yet, buy some tuition (with beer or whatnot) from someone at the local hackspace or similar.

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#28

Post by ZenoArrow »

kanzure wrote: post #26
shoo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it sounds like they'd be happy donating some amount comparable to the cost of current tools if the donations would result in the project being made usable for them. it's not about it making a difference or not to the project, it's about it resulting in a sufficiently improved tool that they can use and get some ROI on

Solution is dominant assurance contracts, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_as...

How would that work in practice in this case? Note that the contract would most likely be with an individual developer, not the project itself.

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#29

Post by ZenoArrow »

alepper wrote: post #25
ZenoArrow wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Academics (in the UK) is there any effort towards making free-libre software available through collaboration of different institutes?" I don't work in that field, so I can't answer your question directly, but I can pass on that EAGLE, which is probably KiCad's closest competitor, is available for free for academic institutions: https://cadsoft.io/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAGLE_(program)

Does this definitely extend to UK academics? They mention a .edu address is required, and I didn't hear back after applying with a .ac.uk address.

I assumed it did, but perhaps it doesn't.

Re: KiCad: A commitment to freedom

#30

Post by aylons »

_b8r0 wrote: post #11

Everyone who doesn't do PCB design will probably find this a great idea. People who design PCBs will probably wonder when KiCad is going to fix the horrific UX bugs, and go back to using Altium or Eagle in the meantime. KiCad is the StarOffice of the PCB design world. I want to use it, but I can't justify the time working around KiCad's UX issues.

I do PCB design, mostly in Altium, and I'll even add that some of my designs are of relatively high complexity.

Saying that Kicad interface is horrendous compared with Eagle is, to say the least, disingenuous. Eagle has a terrible interface, lots of limitations, and a very strange mental model for design.

Kicad is still far from perfection, and I do believe that the UX must improve. But even the best tool in this aspect - IMO, Altium - suffers from a lot of other issues.

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