Hi Javier, Thank-you for your email, it's very exciting news for KiCad.
I have already got projects underway using the CERN Open Hardware Licence. That is a great initiative! It's really nice that you've put so much effort into explaining where you are coming from and what you are prepared to do for KiCad. Thank-you for taking the time to put the email together and letting us know. It feels like exciting times ahead! Best Regards, Brian. On 11 April 2013 14:22, Javier Serrano <javier.serrano.par...@gmail.com>wrote: > Dear all, > > As you know, the BE-CO-HT section at CERN has been contributing to Kicad > for some time now. We see this involvement as a key part of our activities > regarding Open Source Hardware [1]. We are also contributing to the > adoption of VHDL and SystemVerilog in the Icarus Verilog simulator, so as > to enable cross-language simulation. Other related activities include the > operation on the Open Hardware Repository [2] and the development of the > CERN Open Hardware Licence [3]. > > Regarding our contribution to Kicad, it took us some time to put our act > together, but I believe we are now ready to announce that development has > started in earnest. We have come up with a preliminary roadmap [4], which > has been discussed with the main Kicad developers [5]. We have agreed that > this strategy is at least a good enough base to start development work. > > The main actors involved on our side will be: > > - Maciej Sumiński, aka "Orson". He is going to be with us for a year > within CERN's Technical Student Programme, working full time on Kicad. He > started in March. He has already started working on a new View component > for Kicad as you saw yesterday. > - Tomasz Włostowski, aka "Tom" or "Tomek", Orson's supervisor. Tom works > on hardware design most of the time, but is also developing a Push & Shove > router for Kicad. > > We are very excited about the opportunity to contribute to Kicad, and I > would like to thank all Kicad developers (in particular the main > developers: Jean-Pierre, Dick and Wayne) for bringing Kicad up to a level > of quality and features where we would judge it worthwhile to invest in. We > very much look forward to collaborating with you all. > > In addition to the manpower I described, we have a small budget we > sometimes use to get work done through companies. If browsing Kicad code > you see files with a CERN copyright statement and an author either from > among the main Kicad developers or another company (only Igalia [6] so > far), that's the way that code was contributed. We believe one way of > making Kicad sustainable and reliable for professional use is to have > companies sell support contracts for Kicad, and companies which contribute > code to Kicad will of course be ideally placed to sell such contracts. This > should sound familiar to people who know how many of the major Linux > distributions work from a financial point of view. There are probably other > ways to reach these goals, and I am very interested in this topic, so > please don't hesitate to contribute ideas in this domain. > > Our budget for Kicad development is as I said very modest. If you think > what we are doing is useful and you would like to help us work better and > faster, please consider donating. CERN's Knowledge Transfer Group has set > up a donations page [7], as part of a global fund-raising effort for > projects which present an interest to society, even if they are not in the > core mandate of CERN (Particle Physics research). There is also a link to > the donations page from the CERN Kicad wiki [4]. I would also like to ask > you to forward this link to whoever you think might be interested. The > donations page is in a very primitive state right now. It does not allow > payment through Paypal, credit cards or other methods yet. You are > requested to send a message to cern.and.soci...@cern.ch and then you get > bank account details which allow you to make a money transfer. This is a > bit inconvenient but I can tell you any contribution at this point in time > will be very useful to go faster through the roadmap. > > Thanks in advance for your help. We are really looking forward to working > with all of you. Cheers, > > Javier > > [1] https://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=190126 > [2] http://www.ohwr.org/ > [3] http://www.ohwr.org/cernohl > [4] http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki > [5] Referred to as "Main Authors" in file AUTHORS.txt of the Kicad sources. > [6] http://www.igalia.com/ > [7] http://cernandsociety.web.cern.ch/technology/kicad-development > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > >
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