Mentor bought by Siemens

[HT-Lab]

For those that haven't seen it:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/siemens-to-buy-mentor-graphics-of-the-u-s-for-4-5-billion

Never thought Siemens would be interested in an EDA company.

Hans
www.ht-lab.com

 

[rickman]

On 11/14/2016 8:00 AM, HT-Lab wrote:

For those that haven't seen it:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/siemens-to-buy-mentor-graphics-of-the-u-s-for-4-5-billion


Never thought Siemens would be interested in an EDA company.

Personally, I'm not too worried about what happens with Mentor. I saw
their products when they were just getting started and have never used
any of them since. I guess I just don't have much need for expensive
commercial tools when I can use free tools from the chip vendors. But
then I don't work on large projects with multiple designers.

--

Rick C

 

[David Brown]

On 14/11/16 23:44, rickman wrote:

On 11/14/2016 8:00 AM, HT-Lab wrote:
For those that haven't seen it:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/siemens-to-buy-mentor-graphics-of-the-u-s-for-4-5-billion



Never thought Siemens would be interested in an EDA company.

Personally, I'm not too worried about what happens with Mentor. I saw
their products when they were just getting started and have never used
any of them since. I guess I just don't have much need for expensive
commercial tools when I can use free tools from the chip vendors. But
then I don't work on large projects with multiple designers.

Just a small point regarding free tools. One of the main corporate
developers of gcc, especially in the embedded world, is Code Sourcery.
Several of the key gcc developers work there, and they are the main
maintainers of embedded MIPS, PPC, embedded ARM (I think), as well as a
number of lesser used architectures. And Code Sourcery is owned by
Mentor these days. If a new owner of Mentor decided that contributing
to free and open source software was no longer part of their business
strategy, the impact on gcc (and related tools) would not be insignificant.

Of course, I have no idea what Siemens would want to do with that part
of Mentor - damaging it would certainly be a silly idea.

 

[rickman]

On 11/15/2016 3:41 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 14/11/16 23:44, rickman wrote:
On 11/14/2016 8:00 AM, HT-Lab wrote:
For those that haven't seen it:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/siemens-to-buy-mentor-graphics-of-the-u-s-for-4-5-billion



Never thought Siemens would be interested in an EDA company.

Personally, I'm not too worried about what happens with Mentor. I saw
their products when they were just getting started and have never used
any of them since. I guess I just don't have much need for expensive
commercial tools when I can use free tools from the chip vendors. But
then I don't work on large projects with multiple designers.


Just a small point regarding free tools. One of the main corporate
developers of gcc, especially in the embedded world, is Code Sourcery.
Several of the key gcc developers work there, and they are the main
maintainers of embedded MIPS, PPC, embedded ARM (I think), as well as a
number of lesser used architectures. And Code Sourcery is owned by
Mentor these days. If a new owner of Mentor decided that contributing
to free and open source software was no longer part of their business
strategy, the impact on gcc (and related tools) would not be insignificant.

Of course, I have no idea what Siemens would want to do with that part
of Mentor - damaging it would certainly be a silly idea.

I seem to recall that was exactly what Oracle did with OpenOffice when
they bought Sun. They were going to shut down any further development
but later changed their mind.

--

Rick C

 

[David Brown]

On 17/11/16 01:14, rickman wrote:

On 11/15/2016 3:41 AM, David Brown wrote:
On 14/11/16 23:44, rickman wrote:
On 11/14/2016 8:00 AM, HT-Lab wrote:
For those that haven't seen it:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/siemens-to-buy-mentor-graphics-of-the-u-s-for-4-5-billion




Never thought Siemens would be interested in an EDA company.

Personally, I'm not too worried about what happens with Mentor. I saw
their products when they were just getting started and have never used
any of them since. I guess I just don't have much need for expensive
commercial tools when I can use free tools from the chip vendors. But
then I don't work on large projects with multiple designers.


Just a small point regarding free tools. One of the main corporate
developers of gcc, especially in the embedded world, is Code Sourcery.
Several of the key gcc developers work there, and they are the main
maintainers of embedded MIPS, PPC, embedded ARM (I think), as well as a
number of lesser used architectures. And Code Sourcery is owned by
Mentor these days. If a new owner of Mentor decided that contributing
to free and open source software was no longer part of their business
strategy, the impact on gcc (and related tools) would not be
insignificant.

Of course, I have no idea what Siemens would want to do with that part
of Mentor - damaging it would certainly be a silly idea.

I seem to recall that was exactly what Oracle did with OpenOffice when
they bought Sun. They were going to shut down any further development
but later changed their mind.

Oracle faffed around with OpenOffice so long after they bought it that
everyone else involved in OpenOffice development started the LibreOffice
project. (Remember, before Oracle bought Sun, most of the important OO
development was already being done by outside groups.) Oracle were
desperately trying to find a way to turn OO into money - but by totally
misunderstanding the OO community, users and developers, they made it
almost completely irrelevant. The only impact OpenOffice has now is to
confuse people that don't understand the difference between OpenOffice
and LibreOffice. There is no noticeable development of OO by either
Oracle or anyone else. All the work is done by others, in the
LibreOffice project.

As far as I can tell, when Mentor bought CodeSourcery, they basically
said "We'll take care of the business stuff - the sales, the marketing,
the integration with other products, the contracts with cpu
manufacturers for new ports, etc. You folks can continue with the
technical stuff - developing gcc, making the IDE packages, the
libraries, the documentation, the gcc project leadership and developer
community management, etc. And you can continue with the same mixture
of commercial work and work for the gcc community as you did before -
we'll pay your salary just the same." My understanding is that the
CodeSourcery folks were happy with that arrangement, and you only have
to look at the number of posts from CodeSourcery addresses on the gcc
mailing lists to see how much they contribute.