… when you paid licence fees for a bug, you are left to pay more annual maintenance to report it …
A bit off topic, but Altium is rock solid compared to my experiences of mentor graphics software. DXDesigner and QuestaSim are orders of magnitude more expensive and more buggy to boot.
Interested in seeing numbers for KiCad though, I have been using it for nearly 10 years and have just mandated it in my business as the tool of choice. It is far too good to pass on.
1 Like
Maybe we should write our own page…
Worse yet, paid software can be filled with bugs without any developers working to fix them. When you find a bug, you’re left to post your issue to a faceless company, all the while hoping that some lonely manager in the company decides that your bug is important enough so that some developer will open the source code and fix it at their work time.
The original feels especially false now when @Seth_h has started a business which fixes bugs (and contributes to the whole community) if you pay them.
5 Likes
In fairness, we also fix bugs if you don’t pay us. But paying customers get their specific bugs fixed immediately when reported. 
I can vouch for the fact that being a professional programmer seems to have no impact on my relative loneliness or lack thereof.
3 Likes
…and KiCad is the best of free EDA packages, including Altium’s CircuitMaker, because KiCad is the only one mentioned by name (although for some reason only in the header). Maybe they are just fishing for search engine hits. Just look at the URL… it looks suspiciously like something which somebody would type to google search, while not describing the content very well.
Short of asking explicitly to allow the program to collect usage stats with the users permission I don’t know of any other way to accurately track this. Maybe generate a random string that would persist across upgrades and not be traceable to any individual. A small ‘ask’ given the software package in my opinion.
That’s true, sometimes I feel that some of the KiCad developers have been my personal code slaves
But of course I meant their comparison between free vs. paid software which implied that because you pay someone you don’t have to resort to forums and random willingness of random developers but get prompt service because you paid money.
1 Like
Wow But at least KiCad can support more than 2 GB of RAM
T.
Hmm, Wayne is a full time developer for some time now
1 Like
WOW! What a bunch of mud slinging, guilt by association, and unsubstantiated claims in that ad!
We all know - and accept - and understand the consequences - that KiCAD doesn’t have all the “features” of expensive, commercial, design programs like Altium. But at least in an ad directed at (supposedly intelligent) design engineers I’d expect them to name at least a few of those shortcomings, rather than repeating the over-generalized, blanket, statement that “KiCAD lacks features”. And what does Altium have to say about bloatware that is so overloaded with seldom-used features, and “features” of questionable value, that few mortals will ever master the program?
The ad mentions “compatibility problems” several times. What a striking example of the pot calling the kettle black! What program, besides Altium, is compatible with Altium? These compatibility problems have plagued the EDA industry for as long as there has been an EDA industry. If anything, KiCAD has done more for compatibility than any other software organization, by publishing its file specifications. Has Altium even bothered to take advantage of that bit of generosity, by including KiCAD file converters in any of its products?
Yeah, after the “30-day free trial” has expired, how many “compatibility problems” will you encounter when you try to finish your design with any program except Altium?
But the line about the “lonely developer” creates the most interesting challenge to display creativity that I have seen in quite a while. It begs for an outpouring of cynical sarcasm.
It is unfortunate that KiCAD’s developers are distributed across four (or perhaps more?) continents. We need a group photo! All the KiCAD developers in one picture . . . . along with their wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, significant others . . . . plus their offspring. How would you caption it? How about,
- “Just imagine what we could have created if we had been lonelier!”
Or how about some tee-shirts with slogans? Imagine an attractive, female, girl-person, of the opposite sex wearing a top with the KiCAD logo and the slogan,
- “Sorry boys, I’m just not interested.
You see, my guy is a KiCAD DEVELOPER!”
Or even something like,
- “If you are a KiCAD DEVELOPER, then I am SINGLE!”
Dale
3 Likes
… I am trying, but I can’t …
2 Likes
I wonder if the Altium sfw developers would prefer to be a bit lonelier as they head off to their daily scrum standup to talk about user stories and burn-down rates.
1 Like
I was laughing hard while reading the text on the above posted link.
Anyone that uses Nightly builds and follows the KiCad BugTracker knows exactly how fast critical bugs are fixed, and also how fast feature requests get implemented.
KiCad V5 is a pretty nifty EDA tool and I think is at a maturity level for most PCB projects; and KiCad is on the path to keep getting better.
3 Likes
Haha, those idiot business types cannot tell the difference between open-source and free software. They fail to realize that open-source software is trademarked and, therefore, can enforce quality standards on admissible code. Failure to distinguish between free and open-source software is a telltale sign of ignorance.
1 Like
The risks of closed source commercial sotware, Altium could close down tomorrow and leave you locked into an unsupported tool. Even worse if the tool is a cloud based application that just stops.
If KiCad shutdown, the source code is out there on the official mirrors and has been built by 3rd parties - it could be forked.
4 Likes
This highly depends on if your feature is of interest to a developer. There are loads of wishlist bugs (even with high user interaction) that have not been implemented for quite some time. It might be tempting for a business to sponsor implementation of exactly what they need if this guarantees timely implementation.
@Seth_h intents to offer this as long as the requested feature fits into the overall plan of kicad (So you can give your own feature request higher priority by paying for its implementation. This does not change the normal review process such a feature would go through)
4 Likes
Let’s not forget what happened with Linux in the server market. Companies felt they were better off getting into supplementing the code base for WHATEVER reason they had in WHATEVER way suited their particular purpose. I can see Kicad reaching the same type of critical mass in its target audience.
1 Like
Maybe @ChrisGammell can setup anonym survey in this forum what visitors allows to click on choice for other EDA systems they have or had in use. As Altium enthusiats never visit the Kicad forum this does not give any numbers about market coverage but shows the approximate numbers of users who changed to Kicad or consider to do so while they use old EDA in parallel for compability reasons. For shure, there are many new “one time” users who never did pcb before and would not buy commercial licence but are now allowed to use EDA instead breadboards. Interesting would be the number of designs/year and reasons for change like OS incompability, expired licences or compatible/incompatible migration paths for designs and library. E.g. I know many users from Mentors Expedition who changed to Altium (including sales representatives !) and do not continue their Mentor license becouse of incompabilities from Expedition to Xpedition versions. Together of what we read in other and more general electronics and DIY forums e.g. about the changed Eagle licence policies gives minimum some numbers of growth directions.
To compare: What was the number of sold KiCon Tickets ?
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.