Qt has many benefits, but Fritzing seems to become a pay project what will probably boost the Kicad downloads. The download button recently changed to a “pay & download” button: Download Fritzing
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Still on github. Not sure they can take it fully ‘paid’ given the license. Just make it see as if you ‘have to’.
The source code of Fritzing is under GNU GPL v3, the documentation and part designs under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareALike 3.0 Unported. The full texts of these licenses are shipped with this download.
EDIT:
I’ve seen this with the Discourse forum software. Some modules that are only included in the paid support version are still fully available in the repos if you know to look.
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Holy Something. I went back and read down further. Is this ethical or even legal?
"You may publish circuits and diagrams that you create with Fritzing and that use our graphics, again as long as you credit us, and publish your works under the same license. A credit can be as simple as “this image was created with Fritzing.”
Occasionally I use Fritzing when needing to use some old files done in early version of Fritzing. I recently upgraded Fritzing and paid for it ( 8.00EUR, about $5 US).
Seems to code will remain open source and you are free to compile it, but if you wish to download the binaries then you need to pay.
Not sure if this is a wise decision. Users will start looking elsewhere.
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Thanks for the clarification. Since it doesn’t affect me personally I didn’t do too deep a dive.
may be critical for understanding the purpose of the statement. GPL is not enforced to files created with GPL’d sw but graphics (probably comparable with KiCad libraries) incorporated into the files can have their own licences.
Anytime you put a restriction on the output of the software like that, I find it troubling.
Remember the Great Tivo Controversy™? I was following Torvald’s take on Groklaw. When he said that telling people how they can design their hardware is a step too far it sunk in for me. I see this as the same. Who wants to hire a legal team? Altium would be cheaper.
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Hey Folks!
I’ve had a few conversations with Kjell over the years about his approach to Fritzing and what it takes to make a sustainable open source project. He does amazing work and is a real benefit to the whole open source community. To suggest otherwise is naive.
First, some history: Fritzing was almost completely abandoned by 2019. Aisler took the initiative to call attention to this at FOSDEM that year (FOSDEM 2019 - Fritzing - the past, the present and the future). Following that talk, a number of developers reached out and one (Kjell Morgenstern) was willing to take a leap of faith and devote his full-time work to the project. Since full-time work requires earning enough money to pay for housing and food, not to mention family support, this was a very large and impressive commitment, especially from someone as talented as Kjell.
So then the first order of business was figuring out how to make developing Fritzing sustainable. Given the Fritzing userbase (primarily hobbyist/academic), sponsorship was not as viable as direct payment for pre-compiled binaries. See Kjell’s talk a year later for details
Note that there is nothing against the GPL in this idea. You are free to pay anyone you like to download a custom compilation of KiCad, just as you are free to pay Fritzing for their pre-packaged binaries. As long as the source is available, not just the letter but also the spirit of open source is satisfied.
While this may only have been recently discovered here, Fritzing has operated successfully this way since 2019 and their usage has only increased. You might check out their user forum for an idea of what actual Fritzing users think of the project’s direction.
I like Fritzing. I generally think that Kjell is rather smart and has done amazing things for the Fritzing community. Fritzing and KiCad are sister-projects. We (KiCad) benefit when Fritzing is improved and brings more people into the electronic design field.
-S
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Excuse my ignorance, but I’ve now visited the fritzing website and have not understood what it’s about and why it’s connected to Qt, nor do I see any connection to KiCAD.
Can someone enlighten me, please?
Fritzing and KiCad are independent.
The interest is in what is happening in another opensource EDA project
Consider me skeptical that it works out for Fritzing in the long run.
My own experience tells me a good chunk of people will sooner flock to Kicad for $0 and whine that we aren’t Fritzing rather than pay up. Lol
Tis the story of OSS worldwide dying as a whole the last few years
Sourceforge used to bring me to tears. 10 similar projects started and none completed because everyone wanted to be ‘the head guy’. OSS is kinda like communism. Well, at least the ideal of it. I don’t think the best of OSS is dying.
Lol, even kicad competitors pop up from time to time, someone shows a screenshot of few symbols and lines drawn on a canvas in their new schematic capture prototype and that’s the last we hear of them.
People have no idea how much work goes into a project of this size and complexity.
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You need to know so many areas to cover the various OS.
KiCad even contains substantial test harnesses. You need a large and diverse team to do this.
I would say that comparable scale projects are the Linux kernel, QGIS, FreeCAD and Libreoffice.
I do not mind paying amounts like 8 or 25 euros for something I use. But I have no idea why would anyone who knows KiCad use Fritzing - the ability to “design” breadboards? I tried Fritzing when I started designing electronics in 2016 and I quickly step up to KiCad.
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It may not matter so much technically but from an arts perspective the (non-3D-, breadboard-) graphical output of Fritzing (to illustrate a book or lectures, etc.) looks much better than KiCad without having to invest a lot of time, IMHO.
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I do this in Kicad. It works but I am not remotely fond of it tbh. Drawing the graphic lines is very primitive and a lot of work.
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Hi Kendarius,
Seth_h posted above, a link to a Fosdem lecture.
One comment in that lecture was that Fritzing was appealing to entry level electronics. If that subject became a more serious interest, the user moved on to Kicad.
Fritzig also works extremely well for the robotics crowd where multiple modules are coupled together…
“The red wire from the battery goes here, the black one here, and the green and yellow and white wires go from here to …”
The electronic modules are physically treated more like Meccano or Lego parts, much as @bask185’s example with Model Railways.