PCB Software

[Don Prescott]

From: Stuart Brorson (sdb@cloud9.net)

On freebe PCB software..

That's what folks said about Linux about five years ago. Those that
aid it look like backward-looking trogledytes now.

OH yeh.....! What's the percentage of commercial organisations using
linux for standard apps....??? Pretty darn small!

The advantages of free/open-source tools are these:
* Full versions usually downloadable for free. No cripple or
nagware. Just download and start designing.

Ha, Ha, download and start crashing more like...!

* Documented ASCII file formats. The vendor isn't trying to lock you
in to his tool set by sticking you with a proprietary binary format.

How many are truly locked..? Most apps have an ASCII storage
mechanism i.e PADS, P-CAD, Protel, OrCAD Layout, Cadstar....

* Protection for legacy designs. At work I have inherited a
CadStar design done back in the middle 1990s. Unfortunately, the
CadStar install media I have is old & worn out, and doesn't work with
Windows XP wayway. I have no budget to spend thousands of $$$ to buy
a modern seat of CadStar just to open up one stinking PCB.

Simple. Find someone with a Cadstar, load-in your design and save in
CPA = ASCII archive format

With free/open-source EDA tools, legacy support is typically built
into the tool.

That's the point: the support is normally ultra-poor

* You get the code.

Who wants the code...!! Do I want a copy of Microsfot Word code, or
Excel code...? Of course not. I want an app that's reliable and of
professional standard...!

And PCB, well, its user
interface takes some getting used to, but it does the job, and I
correspond with folks who have done 8 layer boards & beyond with it.

That says it all. Just to save a few dollars some folks are prepared
to torture themselves and wear sackcloth and ashes....

: In short, probably OK if you want to while away the hours playing
with
: a hobbyist's toolset. Useless if you're trying to design a real
: product that's gotta go out the door on time......

People are using this stuff in industry. Open your eyes and look
around. You'll see more of it as time goes on.

Oh yeh, they are...? Nobody I deal with would risk critical projects
to shareware

Prescott

 

[Leon Heller]

"Don Prescott" <DMBPrescott@aol.com> wrote in message
news:7fb54666.0412140135.3275c4ba@posting.google.com...

From: Stuart Brorson (sdb@cloud9.net)

On freebe PCB software..

That's what folks said about Linux about five years ago. Those that
aid it look like backward-looking trogledytes now.

OH yeh.....! What's the percentage of commercial organisations using
linux for standard apps....??? Pretty darn small!

The advantages of free/open-source tools are these:
* Full versions usually downloadable for free. No cripple or
nagware. Just download and start designing.

Ha, Ha, download and start crashing more like...!

* Documented ASCII file formats. The vendor isn't trying to lock you
in to his tool set by sticking you with a proprietary binary format.

How many are truly locked..? Most apps have an ASCII storage
mechanism i.e PADS, P-CAD, Protel, OrCAD Layout, Cadstar....


* Protection for legacy designs. At work I have inherited a
CadStar design done back in the middle 1990s. Unfortunately, the
CadStar install media I have is old & worn out, and doesn't work with
Windows XP wayway. I have no budget to spend thousands of $$$ to buy
a modern seat of CadStar just to open up one stinking PCB.

Simple. Find someone with a Cadstar, load-in your design and save in
CPA = ASCII archive format

With free/open-source EDA tools, legacy support is typically built
into the tool.

That's the point: the support is normally ultra-poor

* You get the code.

Who wants the code...!! Do I want a copy of Microsfot Word code, or
Excel code...? Of course not. I want an app that's reliable and of
professional standard...!

And PCB, well, its user
interface takes some getting used to, but it does the job, and I
correspond with folks who have done 8 layer boards & beyond with it.

That says it all. Just to save a few dollars some folks are prepared
to torture themselves and wear sackcloth and ashes....

: In short, probably OK if you want to while away the hours playing
with
: a hobbyist's toolset. Useless if you're trying to design a real
: product that's gotta go out the door on time......

People are using this stuff in industry. Open your eyes and look
around. You'll see more of it as time goes on.

Oh yeh, they are...? Nobody I deal with would risk critical projects
to shareware

It's 'open source', not shareware.

Where I worked a few years ago on military comms systems, the 'official'
compiler was so full of bugs that the the software engineers used the GNU
compiler for development.

Leon

 

[Stuart Brorson]

Leon Heller <leon_heller@hotmail.com> wrote:
: "Don Prescott" <DMBPrescott@aol.com> wrote in message
: news:7fb54666.0412140135.3275c4ba@posting.google.com...
:> >From: Stuart Brorson (sdb@cloud9.net)
:>
:> On freebe PCB software..
:>
:>>That's what folks said about Linux about five years ago. Those that
:>>aid it look like backward-looking trogledytes now.
:>
:> OH yeh.....! What's the percentage of commercial organisations using
:> linux for standard apps....??? Pretty darn small!
:>
:>>The advantages of free/open-source tools are these:
:>>* Full versions usually downloadable for free. No cripple or
:>>nagware. Just download and start designing.
:>
:> Ha, Ha, download and start crashing more like...!
:>

[. . . . remaining opinions snipped . . . .]

:>>People are using this stuff in industry. Open your eyes and look
:>>around. You'll see more of it as time goes on.
:>
:> Oh yeh, they are...? Nobody I deal with would risk critical projects
:> to shareware

: It's 'open source', not shareware.

: Where I worked a few years ago on military comms systems, the 'official'
: compiler was so full of bugs that the the software engineers used the GNU
: compiler for development.

Indeed. Herr Prescott certainly has his opinions, and he is welcome
to them. Nobody's mind will be changed by reading usenet posts,
anyway. However, some people reading this will take the opportunity
to actually try out some of the apps (although likely not
Hr. Prescott), and *that* will likely change some minds.

I'll end my participation in this thread by noting this:
Hr. Prescott makes the false association open-source = free/share-ware
= bad quality. In reality, there is good software and bad software.
Sometimes, the free stuff is bad, sometimes it's great
(e.g. Linux, gcc, apache, Python, Perl, TCL, OpenOffice, gEDA
etc. etc. etc.) Hr. Prescott evidently also thinks
commercial/proprietary software = good quality. In reality, everybody
knows of many commercial apps which stink, as well as some really
great stuff (MATLAB, Mathematica, Mac OSX).

The point is that the open-source development methodology has proven
itself capable of developing remarkably stable & usable applications.
In a penny-pinching economic environment where low-end speciality
apps (e.g. EDA) are shoddily supported and expensive, folks will turn
to open-source alternatives if those alternatives are up to the task.
It's up to the users to make their own choices. And that's what the
open-source stuff is all about: user choice instead of vendor choice.

Stuart

 

[David]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:35:48 -0800, Don Prescott wrote:

From: Stuart Brorson (sdb@cloud9.net)

On freebe PCB software..

These astroturf posters are always entertaining...

That's what folks said about Linux about five years ago. Those that
aid it look like backward-looking trogledytes now.

OH yeh.....! What's the percentage of commercial organisations using
linux for standard apps....??? Pretty darn small!

Actually, the percentage of organisations (commercial or otherwise) that
is *not* dependant on open source software is pretty small - and even
those are dependant on ISPs and other infrastructure that is dependant on
open source. Linux is, of couse, only one example of commonly-used open
source software.

The percentages will vary enormously according to type of software. The
percentages of companies using open-source EDA software for commercial
designs is going to be small, albeit growing. The percentage for more
common software like browsers or word processors is pretty big, and
growing rapidly. The percentage for server software such as web servers
and small database servers outweights that of commercial closed-source
software.

The advantages of free/open-source tools are these:
* Full versions usually downloadable for free. No cripple or
nagware. Just download and start designing.

Ha, Ha, download and start crashing more like...!

Sounds like a solid, well-researched, reasoned argument to me.

* Documented ASCII file formats. The vendor isn't trying to lock you
in to his tool set by sticking you with a proprietary binary format.

How many are truly locked..? Most apps have an ASCII storage
mechanism i.e PADS, P-CAD, Protel, OrCAD Layout, Cadstar....

And how many of these have complete freely available documentation,
unencumbered by licenses and restrictions? And how many are considered the
standard default file format? And how many actually include all the
features and details of their own closed binary format?

Basically, the problem is being able to change from one tool vendor to
another without losing all access to your own data. Each vendor, thinking
in its own little world is concerned with keeping users locked in - if
they made it easy to convert data, it would be easy to change vendors.

* Protection for legacy designs. At work I have inherited a
CadStar design done back in the middle 1990s. Unfortunately, the
CadStar install media I have is old & worn out, and doesn't work with
Windows XP wayway. I have no budget to spend thousands of $$$ to buy
a modern seat of CadStar just to open up one stinking PCB.

Simple. Find someone with a Cadstar, load-in your design and save in
CPA = ASCII archive format

What a marvelous solution - ask your competitors nicely if they will help
you convert files from a proprietry undocumented binary format to a
proprietry undocumented ASCII format.

With free/open-source EDA tools, legacy support is typically built
into the tool.

That's the point: the support is normally ultra-poor

Do you know what the term "legacy support" actually means? It means "able
to work with old data formats" - something that lots of commercial
software can't do (for example, the easiest way to get Excel 97+ to read
Excel 4 files is to use Open Office to convert the formats).

And if you are talking about support for software - I personally like the
idea of sending an email on a mailing list and getting a reply from the
software's author, rather than paying through the nose to be told to
re-install the software or buy the latest version.

* You get the code.

Who wants the code...!! Do I want a copy of Microsfot Word code, or
Excel code...? Of course not. I want an app that's reliable and of
professional standard...!

No one in their right mind wants the code for MS Word. Every time large
closed-source projects have been open-sourced (Star Office, Mozilla,
Interbase, etc.), it has been very clear that open-source coders write
code that will stand the light of day, while closed-source coders can
write whatever hacks come into their heads.

For most people, especially large companies, source code access is an
insurance policy - it means that they always have a way out if the authors
discontinue the project, or there are bugs which never get fixed. It
doesn't mean they plan to look at the code - it means they can pay someone
to fix or change the code if they need to.

And thanks for the laugh mentioning "MS Word" and "professional standard"
in the same sentence.

And PCB, well, its user
interface takes some getting used to, but it does the job, and I
correspond with folks who have done 8 layer boards & beyond with it.

That says it all. Just to save a few dollars some folks are prepared
to torture themselves and wear sackcloth and ashes....

Open source EDA tools are probably not yet ready for the mass market, but
they are getting there. There are plenty of people that choose different
tools for different reasons, and for some, the open source EDA tools are
already viable. Personally, I don't use gEDA or PCB - but I do use an
open source tool (confluence) for FPGA design. My alternative commercial
solutions (VHDL or Verilog) are also free - yet I choose the open source
tool because it does a better job for me.

: In short, probably OK if you want to while away the hours playing
with
: a hobbyist's toolset. Useless if you're trying to design a real
: product that's gotta go out the door on time......

People are using this stuff in industry. Open your eyes and look
around. You'll see more of it as time goes on.

Oh yeh, they are...? Nobody I deal with would risk critical projects
to shareware

As I thought - an astroturfer, with no idea what "open source" means. And
if you mean that no one you know uses open source EDA software for
critical projects, then you are probably right at the moment - it's a
specialised world. If you mean no one uses open source software
for critical projects, then you really are talking though a hole in your
head.


> Prescott

 

[Clarence]

"David" <david.nospam@westcontrol.removethis.com> wrote in message
newsan.2004.12.14.15.20.02.238000@westcontrol.removethis.com...

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:35:48 -0800, Don Prescott wrote:

From: Stuart Bronson (sdb@cloud9.net)
On freebee PCB software..

These Astroturf posters are always entertaining...

That's what folks said about Linux about five years ago. Those that
aid it look like backward-looking troglodytes now.

OH yen.....! What's the percentage of commercial organizations using
Linux for standard apps....??? Pretty darn small!

I only know of eight multinational corporations headquartered locally that use
Linux, several others use Open Source for their own apps. Even Microsoft uses
Apache in-house, as does the NSA and several other government groups. A lot of
DOD stuff is based on a linux Kernel too.

My company uses only open source, and we use Linux for all control systems.