> 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.
If you go with "windows only" you loose all of the developers unless you pay them. Very few will work on Windows for free. It's actually very easy to make portable multi-platform code One way to seriously speed up Kicad development is to leverage the efforts of other Open Source electronic design software. Let's say the a sophisticated design rule checker gets written for the gEDA project. Wouldn't it be nice if it could check Kicad projects? An expedient way to make this happen is with netlist translators. A better way would be to come up with a common format for netlists. This is the way to go. As of now the Open Source EDA community is split between three or four projects. About paying programmers. Some hobbyists will work for $100. No profesional would. not unless he swaps hats at night. There are project that offer "bounties" for features but I'm but sure those small suns help much. But there are many, many examples of open source moving very quickly once some one hires a programer and puts him on salary. This gives him what he needs which is TIME. If I'm working 50+ hours a week at work writing code. Offering my $200 to work more is not going to work because there is no time. Look at the big Open Source projects. All of them have programmers on salary. -- ===== Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California
