There seems to be a lot of confusion about me.
All I have done is highlight a few flaws in kicad and upset a lot of people.
Given my last ticket was 7480 then kicad has/does have some problems.
It seems because I wrote my own pcbcad software that I must be totally and utterly biased and my comments of no worth what so ever.
kicad has bugs and so does mine.
I have been writing pcbcad software since 1990 so my comments must have at least a little merit.
I no longer sell pcbcad software, its a waste of time while people are giving it away.
Gone on to bigger and more profitable things.
I highlight flaws in kicad all the time and sometimes upset people, too, but in a different way. To me it looks like your reasoning and the reasoning of the rest of the people is very different. (I’m referring to some eevblog discussions which I saw.)
This topic and your comments and other comments were OK until the discussion turned into this. Please, moderator, lock this, although I would still be interested in discussing about Free Software ethics and economics which is important and interesting topic and touches KiCad.
We all know very well kicad has problems, but what you reported is a small feature wish and as was pointed out, someone even wrote a python plugin for that. One of the bigger flaws of KiCad is that finding, installing and managing plugins is difficult, and we hope to get something better for that in v6. That, with a dedicated plugin, should be enough for your use case. Just like in all other massive piece of software, KiCad can’t just take all wishes and implement them as first class citizens.
Considering the scope of your own software I doubt you understand how difficult it is to make feature decisions and prioritize them in KiCad project. KiCad aims for big companies and large user base with very heterogeneous requirements. Lack of positioning the footprints like in the schematic isn’t a fault, flaw or problem. If you continue claiming that KiCad has “problems” because of that feature wish, it just reveals how differently you think than the rest of us, and that’s the real reason you get negative feedback. Constructive criticism and feature wishes per se have never caused any negative reaction here.
As for the mentioned feature request, I think it was misunderstood in the issue database. The first comment which recommended the plugin understood it correctly. I wouldn’t mind if someone implemented it in KiCad proper, but to me it just looks like it’s not important enough and there are too many details which depend on exact requirements of different users that it may not be worth it. It’s great that someone wrote the plugin and I recommend it if it fits into your workflow.
But this discussion that you started isn’t about “bugs”, it’s about free software. My take on your efforts is that you were not in the right place at the right time. Perhaps if you had a big sponsor and your work was encouraged your history might have been different. By funding KiCad CERN got what it needed and generously made it open source benefiting others.
The work on Arpanet paved the way for the Internet. Is it wrong that entire industries were born and benefited from government funded research? Society benefited too.
Don’t imagine that in hypothetical world you could make all grants and funding for open source projects disappear with a snap of the fingers, you would get a more level playing field for small participants. If anything it will be even more biased towards entrenched players. For open source the way to make the field more level is to collaborate more.