Dick, I agree. The areas I see that take the most time, and are targets for improvement are:
1. Library Structures. Everyone wants a robust, well organized library. Good decals. 2. Routing rules to auto router and for design checking. 3. PERFECT gerber generation and design checking. I own PADS, OrCAD and SPECCTRA so I have yet to play with KiCAD yet. Also, I see the only "Serious Business Platform" as Win32. Support of multiple OS is like a bubble sort, as you increase the number of OS the effert goes up as a power. Thanks, Bob Kondner -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dick H. Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 10:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [kicad-users] Re: Creating an interface to FreeRouting Philip, Is this something you can do and want to do? It would cost me a week or two to do it. I cannot contribute that much money to the project without compensation. We might want to explore a way to fund this by gathering funds from a consortium of users. I once saw a website that made this easy to do. Without coordinated funding, this project will only ever get what folks can do for themselves. This is a deficiency of open source. As a user now, you have to hope and pray (i.e. "wish") that somebody donates their time on an enhancement that you point out. This is wishful thinking at best. Your request goes onto a "wishlist" and may sit there forever, unless you have the skills to code it yourself. However, imagine a mechanism which would allow users to pool funds from themselves and their peers, and create a work order for a specific enhancement or bug fix. Then developers could justify spending time on the work order, and the requests would then not be considered mere "wishes". Is this an idea worth exploring? My current highest priority is to get usable zone support into the project. So your "wish" cannot be granted by me at this time. Not for free that is. Software ain't free. Even open source software cost somebody something. If KICAD is merely a hobbyist program, then I can imagine the status quo might persist. However, if there are businesses using the software for a profit, then it strikes me as a prudent business strategy for those businesses to consider investing in something that might improve their productivity. Dick Hollenbeck SoftPLC Corporation http://softplc.com Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your question. Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator of Kicad. Please visit http://www.kicadlib.org for details of how to contribute your symbols/modules to the kicad library. For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the kicad-devel group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-devel Yahoo! Groups Links
