Anyone have real world prices for PADS and Altium Designer P

I've have the task to write a report about the features and prices
for a number of PCB CAD applications, which will lead up to purchasing
a CAD suite. I've found pricing and feature information about a number
of PCB applications and just two remain on the list.

The CAD apps are:

PADS XE or SE
Altium Designer v6

I thought I'd ask the readers of this newsgroup if they have any
experience with what they or the companies they work for actually paid
for those two PCB CAD apps.

I've read a number of posts in this and some other electronics
newsgroups about the pros and cons of a variety of PCB CAD programs.

At the moment, I'm just curious about pricing.

So if you have some idea of actual pricing for those products (or
which ever modules of the full package you bought), I'd appreciate it
if you could post that information in this newgroup.

I just wanted some idea of the real world prices for those apps before
contacting the sales departments of Mentor Graphics and Altium.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

<anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:n30gq2hkkc7es2ag2v83qqg8jn43slrj1s@4ax.com...

I've have the task to write a report about the features and prices
for a number of PCB CAD applications, which will lead up to purchasing
a CAD suite.

PADS XE or SE
Altium Designer v6

I believe that, in both cases, there are so many licensing options available
that at best you'll be getting a *wide* range of prices. Your best bet
probably really is to call up the vendors and ask them what that range is as
well as what a *typical* setup goes for, in addition to the information you
get here.

As you seem to hint, a report such as the one you're writing is good primarily
for figuring out which packages are immediately cut due to their being
entirely out of your price range... for everything else you have to sit down
and play with the tools yourself.

 

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 15:56:59 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
<JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote:

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:n30gq2hkkc7es2ag2v83qqg8jn43slrj1s@4ax.com...
I've have the task to write a report about the features and prices
for a number of PCB CAD applications, which will lead up to purchasing
a CAD suite.

PADS XE or SE
Altium Designer v6

I believe that, in both cases, there are so many licensing options available
that at best you'll be getting a *wide* range of prices. Your best bet
probably really is to call up the vendors and ask them what that range is as
well as what a *typical* setup goes for, in addition to the information you
get here.

As you seem to hint, a report such as the one you're writing is good primarily
for figuring out which packages are immediately cut due to their being
entirely out of your price range... for everything else you have to sit down
and play with the tools yourself.

I plan on meeting with a number of vendors, I was hoping to get some
idea of what people have actually paid for CAD packages before
negotiating with the sales reps. As you mentioned, if the price for
some packages is really high, I won't spend time with some vendor
reps.

It's been a week and no one has responded with any actual figures, so
I'll repost my original query in sci.electronics.design. I'll add a
note that although I'm cross posting, I've already post once in
sci.electronics.cad with no result.

 

[Paul E. Schoen]

<anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:smm1r2lv1pdtv8tfmlinnnk21qm3fclifh@4ax.com...

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 15:56:59 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote:

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:n30gq2hkkc7es2ag2v83qqg8jn43slrj1s@4ax.com...
I've have the task to write a report about the features and prices
for a number of PCB CAD applications, which will lead up to purchasing
a CAD suite.

PADS XE or SE
Altium Designer v6

I believe that, in both cases, there are so many licensing options
available
that at best you'll be getting a *wide* range of prices. Your best bet
probably really is to call up the vendors and ask them what that range is
as
well as what a *typical* setup goes for, in addition to the information
you
get here.

As you seem to hint, a report such as the one you're writing is good
primarily
for figuring out which packages are immediately cut due to their being
entirely out of your price range... for everything else you have to sit
down
and play with the tools yourself.

I plan on meeting with a number of vendors, I was hoping to get some
idea of what people have actually paid for CAD packages before
negotiating with the sales reps. As you mentioned, if the price for
some packages is really high, I won't spend time with some vendor
reps.

It's been a week and no one has responded with any actual figures, so
I'll repost my original query in sci.electronics.design. I'll add a
note that although I'm cross posting, I've already post once in
sci.electronics.cad with no result.

A very active forum is available through the www.mentor.com website. You
can access it through a newsreader with listserver.pads.com/talk. I think
the web address is: http://listserver.pads.com/ but the server is down
right now.

The local VAR for Maryland is Trilogic in Columbia. They have branches
elsewhere.

It would be good to look through the history of the posts to see how
frustrated many loyal PADS users have become since they were purchased by
Mentor and now are coerced into buying an expensive annual maintenence
contract just to be eligible for bug fixes that usually break more than
they fix.

Paul

 

[Paul Burke]

anon@no_email.com
It's been a week and no one has responded with any actual figures, so
I'll repost my original query in sci.electronics.design.

I suspect that most people who read s.e.c. also look at s.e.d. and
filter the noise. I also suspect that the reason you haven't got prices
is that most people who use the non-free versions PADS, Altium etc.
don't pay for it, and vice-versa.

Paul Burke

 

[Paul E. Schoen]

********* See the corrected web address below ************

"Paul E. Schoen" <pstech@smart.net> wrote in message
news:45b5b9aa$0$17952$ecde5a14@news.coretel.net...

A very active forum is available through the www.mentor.com website. You
can access it through a newsreader with listserver.pads.com/talk.

The web address is: http://listserver.pads.com/read/?forum=talk
The local VAR for Maryland is Trilogic in Columbia. They have branches
elsewhere.

It would be good to look through the history of the posts to see how
frustrated many loyal PADS users have become since they were purchased by
Mentor and now are coerced into buying an expensive annual maintenence
contract just to be eligible for bug fixes that usually break more than
they fix.

Paul

 

On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:28:32 -0500, "Paul E. Schoen"
<pstech@smart.net> wrote:

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:smm1r2lv1pdtv8tfmlinnnk21qm3fclifh@4ax.com...
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 15:56:59 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote:

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:n30gq2hkkc7es2ag2v83qqg8jn43slrj1s@4ax.com...
I've have the task to write a report about the features and prices
for a number of PCB CAD applications, which will lead up to purchasing
a CAD suite.


It's been a week and no one has responded with any actual figures, so
I'll repost my original query in sci.electronics.design. I'll add a
note that although I'm cross posting, I've already post once in
sci.electronics.cad with no result.


A very active forum is available through the www.mentor.com website. You
can access it through a newsreader with listserver.pads.com/talk. I think
the web address is: http://listserver.pads.com/ but the server is down
right now.

Thanks. I didn't know about that forum.

The local VAR for Maryland is Trilogic in Columbia. They have branches
elsewhere.

Thanks again. I've already found the local rep. I attended a PADS
seminar at their location last year.

I was curious about how pricing works in the PCB CAD industry, if
everyone pays list or if discounting off list is common practice. It's
beginning to sound like high end CAD systems have both high initial
purchase prices and high annual maintenance fees.

It would be good to look through the history of the posts to see how
frustrated many loyal PADS users have become since they were purchased by
Mentor and now are coerced into buying an expensive annual maintenence
contract just to be eligible for bug fixes that usually break more than
they fix.

I've read similar complaints about how Protel went downhill after it
was rebranded as Altium.

I've also heard hints about very expensive PADS maintenance annual
fees, but I haven't read the actual figures yet. Maybe someone posted
that information on that listserver.

 

On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:22:33 +0000, Paul Burke <paul@scazon.com>
wrote:

anon@no_email.com
It's been a week and no one has responded with any actual figures, so
I'll repost my original query in sci.electronics.design.

I suspect that most people who read s.e.c. also look at s.e.d. and
filter the noise. I also suspect that the reason you haven't got prices
is that most people who use the non-free versions PADS, Altium etc.
don't pay for it, and vice-versa.

Paul Burke

I haven't posted to s.e.d yet, I thought I'd think about it before
posting there. But you may be right, perhaps all users of CAD systems
in the sci.electronics newsgroups are using pirated copies of PADS and
Altium.

I suspect that choosing a CAD system is something of a sticky
decision, once you've chosen one, invested heavily in training and
have become used to using one system, you're probably not very
interested in looking at another system. So s.e.d may be populated
with users who have chosen a system already and have no need to read
s.e.c.

Before posting my question here in s.e.c, I was actually afraid that
the topic might start a flame war between PADS and Altium users. I
never expected that hardly anyone would respond.

Crossposting is frowned upon, but this situation might have been one
of the few times that crossposting was appropriate. I would have
guessed that s.e.c was the right forum to ask about PADS and Altium
pricing, but it that doesn't appear to be the case. So a crosspost to
s.e.c and s.e.d, if only people in s.e.d respond, wouldn't have
created dual newsgroup threads, the usual complaint about crossposts.

In any case, I thought I'd wait a little while longer before posting
to s.e.d. That way, with enough of a posting delay and with no actual
answer to my original question in s.e.c, s.e.d readers might be less
inclined to complain about a very much time delayed cross post.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

<anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:vm1fr2pfrcbtnf6u3usi9g565gfr36jmna@4ax.com...

I was curious about how pricing works in the PCB CAD industry, if
everyone pays list or if discounting off list is common practice.

Generally speaking, the more expensive the product is, the more likelihood
there is that you'll be able to negotitate a discount/better package
price/etc. Speaking very roughly, anything <$1k is probably pretty fixed in
price, anything >$10k has somewhat flexible pricing. Additionally, the more
licenses you have, the more likely you are to be able to negotiate a deal.
For instance: Some packages such as Pulsonix and Protel have free viewers
available, whereas ironically enough more expensive package such as PADS
don't. However, if you have at least a small handful of PADS licenses,
usually Mentor will give you a "viewer only" license for the asking.

(In some ways EDA tools seem like hotels... nice, mid-level hotels give you
free amenities like WiFi and breakfast, the most expensive hotels want to
nickle and dime you for every last little thing...)

As you'd expect, there's usually more pricing flexibility when a company is
coming to the end of its fiscal quarter and the salesguys are trying to meet
their quotas or qualify for bonuses.

It's
beginning to sound like high end CAD systems have both high initial
purchase prices and high annual maintenance fees.

Annual maintenance fees are typically 10-20% of the purchsae price. Companies
differ in how much support they'll provide to those out of maintenance...
Mentor won't let you do much of *anything* (no access to their knowledge base,
no access to service packs, etc.). This "no downloads of anything, even if
it's just a patch to fix a BUG in the software we ALREADY sold you" approach
unfortunately seems to be getting more common -- Pulsonix just adopted it with
their newest release, 4.5.

---Joel

 

[Brad Velander]

Well you certainly haven't gotten much of a response.

Largely it looks like you understand the issue(s) pretty well. There are
licensed users on this group of both PADs and Altium but they are probably
all sure that there is no sure single answer to your enquiry. It varies with
all the conditions you mentioned, including how well sales have gone this
quarter, this half, this year. The biggest question would be how many seats
are you going to buy? Also those actually using licensed software probably
aren't keeping up on pricing and bundling.

As for the comment about Altium support getting worse than prior Protel
support, someone is feeding you a complete line of shit. Having used
Protel/Altium for the last 7 plus years, their support has gotten better in
recent years. That is not to say there still isn't loads of room for
improvements on their part. Some of the current issues people have issue
with is policies rather than support. i.e. Long waits for bug fixes to
actually be released (You're told it has been fixed but it will not be
released until the next update, many months down the road.).

Just FYI. You will find very similar comments and gripes about all the
main software vendors. Myself having used a number of them over the years
can attest to the fact that they are all much the same and even those that
are significantly better at any one time will cycle through the dregs
periodically. (OrCAD, PADs!) Even an acquaintance that used Mentor Board
Station used to tell me that for the money his employer paid (approx.
$75,000 per seat), he figured it was about the same cost per bug/issue. They
just had that many more bugs and issues because the system was so much more
complex.

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

<anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:mv1fr2l4d0dk07edp6snpjn50k7bpve4he@4ax.com...

On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:22:33 +0000, Paul Burke <paul@scazon.com
wrote:

anon@no_email.com

I haven't posted to s.e.d yet, I thought I'd think about it before
posting there. But you may be right, perhaps all users of CAD systems
in the sci.electronics newsgroups are using pirated copies of PADS and
Altium.

I suspect that choosing a CAD system is something of a sticky
decision, once you've chosen one, invested heavily in training and
have become used to using one system, you're probably not very
interested in looking at another system. So s.e.d may be populated
with users who have chosen a system already and have no need to read
s.e.c.

 

[Brad Velander]

Joel,
Just to correct you on the one point, PADs does have a free viewer. At
least up until very recent versions, they did.
Just install the software without entering a valid license code and voila, a
free viewer. Won't save anything but you can view files all day long. Worked
up until 2004 versions anyway, we have several installs configured in such a
manner at work.

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

"Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:12rf9pmpdv1us1b@corp.supernews.com...

Generally speaking, the more expensive the product is, the more likelihood
there is that you'll be able to negotitate a discount/better package
price/etc. Speaking very roughly, anything <$1k is probably pretty fixed
in price, anything >$10k has somewhat flexible pricing. Additionally, the
more licenses you have, the more likely you are to be able to negotiate a
deal. For instance: Some packages such as Pulsonix and Protel have free
viewers available, whereas ironically enough more expensive package such
as PADS don't. However, if you have at least a small handful of PADS
licenses, usually Mentor will give you a "viewer only" license for the
asking.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

"Brad Velander" <bveland@SpamThis.com> wrote in message
news:QdVth.784759$5R2.565588@pd7urf3no...

Just to correct you on the one point, PADs does have a free viewer. At
least up until very recent versions, they did.

Thanks Brad, I'll try your suggestion -- it would be nice if I'm wong! We're
uisng PADS2005sp2 (we're on the $$$ maintenance plan...).

---Joel

 

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:01:10 GMT, "Brad Velander"
<bveland@SpamThis.com> wrote:

Well you certainly haven't gotten much of a response.

Largely it looks like you understand the issue(s) pretty well.
There are
licensed users on this group of both PADs and Altium but they are probably
all sure that there is no sure single answer to your enquiry. It varies with
all the conditions you mentioned, including how well sales have gone this
quarter, this half, this year. The biggest question would be how many seats
are you going to buy? Also those actually using licensed software probably
aren't keeping up on pricing and bundling.

I wouldn't have minded any response about pricing, even out of date
prices. ;->

We're only thinking about buying two seats. When I thought about it
though, just finding out what other people had bought, which packages
and options and how much they cost, would have been quite interesting.
That would have been a guide to what we should be looking carefully at
buying.

You're right, there are a lot of options that could be purchased and
it would be interesting to find out what other users bought and which
options they found were most useful.

As for the comment about Altium support getting worse than prior Protel
support, someone is feeding you a complete line of shit. Having used
Protel/Altium for the last 7 plus years, their support has gotten better in
recent years.

Actually, all I know about Altium is what came up on a google search
of s.e.c and s.e.d. while searching for "Protel" and "Altium". I
read a number of posts about how the best version was Protel 99 and
that things had gone downhill since then.

However, it's possible that, as you mentioned, Altium has many more
features and is much more complex than any earlier version of Protel.
So it might appear that Altium is worse, but the bugs/feature ratio
may not have changed over the years.

That ratio might even have improved, but with enough new features, the
total absolute number of bugs has increased. So things look worse, but
they really aren't.

 

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:36:39 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
<JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote:

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:vm1fr2pfrcbtnf6u3usi9g565gfr36jmna@4ax.com...
I was curious about how pricing works in the PCB CAD industry, if
everyone pays list or if discounting off list is common practice.

Generally speaking, the more expensive the product is, the more likelihood
there is that you'll be able to negotitate a discount/better package
price/etc. Speaking very roughly, anything <$1k is probably pretty fixed in
price, anything >$10k has somewhat flexible pricing. Additionally, the more
licenses you have, the more likely you are to be able to negotiate a deal.

We're likely to spend more than $10K, so if a discount is possible in
that price range, that's good to know. As an example, if you're buying
a car in that price range, you probably wouldn't expect much of a
discount. But if $10K is roughly the threshold at which CAD tools
begin to be discounted, that's something I didn't know.

It's
beginning to sound like high end CAD systems have both high initial
purchase prices and high annual maintenance fees.

Annual maintenance fees are typically 10-20% of the purchsae price. Companies
differ in how much support they'll provide to those out of maintenance...
Mentor won't let you do much of *anything* (no access to their knowledge base,
no access to service packs, etc.). This "no downloads of anything, even if
it's just a patch to fix a BUG in the software we ALREADY sold you" approach
unfortunately seems to be getting more common -- Pulsonix just adopted it with
their newest release, 4.5.

One acquintance we works at an end user company told me that their
ASIC design package didn't have a purchase price or annual maintenance
fee, just an annual license fee of $140K per year per seat. That price
also came with an NDA so he couldn't tell me which package he was
referring to. Aside from jolting me awake, we weren't looking to make
our own ASICs, so that information was only peripherally interesting
to me.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

<anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:jhdkr29jhsakfacoa58nebplokeqko5g4f@4ax.com...

One acquintance we works at an end user company told me that their
ASIC design package didn't have a purchase price or annual maintenance
fee, just an annual license fee of $140K per year per seat. That price
also came with an NDA so he couldn't tell me which package he was
referring to.

Nice!

Ever read John Cooley's ESNUG newsletter? It's primarily aimed at people
using Synopsys tools doing digital ICs, and it has lots of good war stories.
Early on Synopsys didn't like the fact that John was publically exposing bugs
in their software, and tried very hard to sue him out of existance. Typical
big company arrogance there!

Some years ago I attempted to use Synopsys's FPGA Express and found it quite
disappointing -- we went out and purchased Veribest within weeks...

---Joel

 

[Joel Kolstad]

"Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:12rkfom6oh0eu32@corp.supernews.com...

Some years ago I attempted to use Synopsys's FPGA Express and found it quite
disappointing -- we went out and purchased Veribest within weeks...

Oops, not Veribest, that should say, "Synplify" (from Synplicity).

 

[Brad Velander]

As per your comments below.

We haven't purchased Protel/Altium in this decade so there is no
relevance to you.
The most recent pricing I am privy to, is approx. $11,000 USD per seat for
the full Altium AD package that includes their full FPGA & Tasking features
but not the Tasking hardware interface. today they have approx. 3 bundled
options for all the features, sorry don't know the pricing haven't pruchased
nor enquired. Other than that there is surely a lot more information you can
get out of a call to their sales office.

PADs, in my last experience a decade ago was a myriad of features and
packaging options that sometimes found you purchasing modules with not one
feature that you wanted but it was necessary for the next module that had a
few features that you did want. Starting out at approx. $5 - 7K as the very
bottom end, one quickly found yourself over $10K and even approaching $20K.
Now that is decade old information and pricing, but then my comments would
also be that their software is 2 decades old. It is truly a decade plus old
DOS engine with a cheesy GUI. If you are well used to Windows software and
conventions, throw that out the window if you purchase PADs.

My comments about Altium support was that, strictly about support. Now
you are bring that around to number of bugs/issues, those are not related
figures one is support availability/response the other is a bug count. You
are right, the software is a lot more feature and complexity rich. Remember
when searching for issues on the internet, generally everyone posts their
gripes few people post their praises when they have no problems or issues.
There are also few professional users posting on the general web, they are
on the software specific list servers. Some of those listservers may let you
join, I know several won't because you are not a registered user (PADs and
maybe Altium. But I would give Altium a try, if you are serious they should
let you join as a sign of good faith and to allow you to research.).

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

<anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:spckr21a509lnc2kncuoi75ll1fq479234@4ax.com...

<SNIP>

I wouldn't have minded any response about pricing, even out of date
prices. ;-

We're only thinking about buying two seats. When I thought about it
though, just finding out what other people had bought, which packages
and options and how much they cost, would have been quite interesting.
That would have been a guide to what we should be looking carefully at
buying.

You're right, there are a lot of options that could be purchased and
it would be interesting to find out what other users bought and which
options they found were most useful.

As for the comment about Altium support getting worse than prior
Protel
support, someone is feeding you a complete line of shit. Having used
Protel/Altium for the last 7 plus years, their support has gotten better
in
recent years.

Actually, all I know about Altium is what came up on a google search
of s.e.c and s.e.d. while searching for "Protel" and "Altium". I
read a number of posts about how the best version was Protel 99 and
that things had gone downhill since then.

However, it's possible that, as you mentioned, Altium has many more
features and is much more complex than any earlier version of Protel.
So it might appear that Altium is worse, but the bugs/feature ratio
may not have changed over the years.

That ratio might even have improved, but with enough new features, the
total absolute number of bugs has increased. So things look worse, but
they really aren't.

 

[Robert]

"Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:12rhp73jgt0jee0@corp.supernews.com...

"Brad Velander" <bveland@SpamThis.com> wrote in message
news:QdVth.784759$5R2.565588@pd7urf3no...
Just to correct you on the one point, PADs does have a free viewer. At
least up until very recent versions, they did.

Thanks Brad, I'll try your suggestion -- it would be nice if I'm wong!
We're uisng PADS2005sp2 (we're on the $$$ maintenance plan...).

---Joel

When the issue has come up before the standard answer has been "Install Pads
without a license" in that it defaults to Demo mode where you can open and
look at files.

Robert

 

On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 07:00:00 GMT, "Brad Velander"
<bveland@SpamThis.com> wrote:

As per your comments below.

We haven't purchased Protel/Altium in this decade so there is no
relevance to you.
The most recent pricing I am privy to, is approx. $11,000 USD per seat for
the full Altium AD package that includes their full FPGA & Tasking features
but not the Tasking hardware interface.

Thanks. I suspect their pricing hasn't changed all that much.

PADs, in my last experience a decade ago was a myriad of features and
packaging options that sometimes found you purchasing modules with not one
feature that you wanted but it was necessary for the next module that had a
few features that you did want. Starting out at approx. $5 - 7K as the very
bottom end, one quickly found yourself over $10K and even approaching $20K.
Now that is decade old information and pricing, but then my comments would
also be that their software is 2 decades old. It is truly a decade plus old
DOS engine with a cheesy GUI. If you are well used to Windows software and
conventions, throw that out the window if you purchase PADs.

That's very interesting, thanks again. I never would have known about
PADS interlocking feature set, forcing you to buy modules that you
don't necessarily need. I'll watch out for that when I start talking
to them.

There are also few professional users posting on the general web, they are
on the software specific list servers. Some of those listservers may let you
join, I know several won't because you are not a registered user (PADs and
maybe Altium. But I would give Altium a try, if you are serious they should
let you join as a sign of good faith and to allow you to research.).

I'll ask Altium about getting access to their listservers. $20K is a
fair amount of money, they ought to allow me to do some research with
their user base comments.

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:spckr21a509lnc2kncuoi75ll1fq479234@4ax.com...

SNIP
I wouldn't have minded any response about pricing, even out of date
prices. ;-

We're only thinking about buying two seats. When I thought about it
though, just finding out what other people had bought, which packages
and options and how much they cost, would have been quite interesting.
That would have been a guide to what we should be looking carefully at
buying.

You're right, there are a lot of options that could be purchased and
it would be interesting to find out what other users bought and which
options they found were most useful.

 

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:49:09 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
<JKolstad71HatesSpam@yahoo.com> wrote:

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:jhdkr29jhsakfacoa58nebplokeqko5g4f@4ax.com...
One acquintance we works at an end user company told me that their
ASIC design package didn't have a purchase price or annual maintenance
fee, just an annual license fee of $140K per year per seat. That price
also came with an NDA so he couldn't tell me which package he was
referring to.

Nice!

Ever read John Cooley's ESNUG newsletter? It's primarily aimed at people
using Synopsys tools doing digital ICs, and it has lots of good war stories.
Early on Synopsys didn't like the fact that John was publically exposing bugs
in their software, and tried very hard to sue him out of existance. Typical
big company arrogance there!

No, I didn't know about Cooley's newsletter. I found it in a search
just now. It's very interesting. Thanks.