Kicad is AWESOME. The challenge I have with it is I don’t want to deal with experimental builds but the new features look incredibly useful.
I worked at a really big software company in the dev org shipping major releases of an OS. Given this experience, I wonder if this is a “good idea”? By good idea - it is probably a really bad idea but I need you to tell me why.
At a minimum what we need is a full time developer, good bug reporting and tracking, good bug triaging, build tests (software), and build testing with criteria on establishing a build as a stable release.
The challenge here is “free free free” which is great, but not when stability is a challenge because there is no accountability…
so…why is this a bad idea?
us (the devoted kicad users) donate enough to subsidize the salary of a full time developer + program manager who is also the build meister? This person would either be a contractor or employee of a company (say Chris’s company - just using as an example - for tax and benefits purposes).
we would find/interview/hire/write out job requirements/review work and provide feedback…
The key is the salary is based on donations. The accountability for the employee would be the company willing to sponsor this effort (it could be a place like hackaday…)…
OK, I’ll stop babbling. Like I said, I think it might be a good idea, which means it probably is not :-)… Feedback on this thought greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Who could complain about stable builds! The idea is certainly great. One of the already existing ways to contribute to the Kicad development (other than actually working in the dev team) is to make donation to CERN who contributes quite a lot of resources on new features development. http://cernandsociety.web.cern.ch/technology/kicad-development
Thanks VERY much for the reply. Certainly donating to CERN is an option. The challenge with getting any feature (in this case stability) to a satisfactory (something shipping that we want to use!) is community and accountability. Community - is the #1 priority for CERN to get stable builds out? Or are they focused on satisfying a different community craving? Accountability - one challenge our teams ran into when releasing OS versions was accountability for dates and bugs. Does CERN have a level of program management, bug tracking, and build meistership to make me feel comfortable my donation will be effectively put towards a stable build?
I’d love for it to be CERN. However, I am not comfortable with the level of agreement I have with CERN regarding community and accountability.
I think the right place to ask this kind of questions is kicad-dev mailing list, they discuss project topics (including releases) there: https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/
Excellent advice. Thanks. I am in process joining the group. When I get approval I will open up my thoughts on a thread and hopefully get a good perspective.
Update - my request to join was approved. I sent the following message on the mailing list:
(please correct me if I am communicating in a method that is not efficient. This is my first message to the mailing list)
I’ve gotten to truly enjoy KiCad. What a great piece of software.
I am interested in donating money to CERN if the priority is on releasing stable builds. Before I do this, I’d like to understand:
what are your priorities regarding features (I see stability as a feature - so my priority would be dev and test members are focused on releasing a stable build. This may not be the case for CERN. So I’d like to gain your perspective).
who is accountable for selecting and meeting a build schedule for the stability feature? For example, if I donate what expectation should I have regarding time frame for stable release and who on the dev side feels awful when the stable release is not realized and will work extra hard to make it so?