> > On Thursday 20 May 2004 09:51 pm, Stuart Brorson wrote: > > Happy reading, and I look forward to your comments, > > Why do you promote LT-Spice? It's a closed source rip of spice. > Closed source "free" software is a major threat to real free > software.
The HOWTO is about doing SPICE simulations on Linux. LTSpice is a great SPICE simulator, it is much more stable & complete than [ng|tcl]spice, and it runs on Linux. My focus is getting the job done, not necessarily promoting GPLed software, or the FSF's agenda. I do agree with the FSF's principles & goals, but that consideration is secondary to getting the job done. > I suppose it would be too much to suggest that Gnucap does > belong there. You have an excellent point: I should also include Gnucap. When I originally started looking into the area of SPICE on Linux, I was led to believe that Gnucap was something slightly different from SPICE. My interest at the time was in simulating circuits incorporating SPICE models from various vendors -- e.g. Analog Devices, National, etc. I didn't want to play around with something non-standard 'cause I was having enough trouble getting *spice to work properly. Therefore I didn't try Gnucap, and my understanding of the free SPICE arena was shaped by that experience. Moving forward, I should probably include a blurb about Gnucap in the HOWTO. Are you willing to write one or two pages describing how to install and run Gnucap? I'd of course stick you in as a contributor. Alternatively, I will investigate Gnucap myself & write the blurb. This might take a long time -- e.g. months -- because time is currently constrained. But it is now on the "to do" list. Thanks for reminding me to include Gnucap. Stuart
