Looks like a fund raising advotorial to me.
Probably better posted here when it is FOS?
I’ll leave it for more opinions.
I’m quite tolerant for FOSS projects. Commercial projects should go pay for their own advertisements somewhere else.
This website:
states:
KiCanvas will be free and open source (MIT license).
(Source apparently to be released in February according to Hackaday).
The http://kicanvas.org/ does not work (yet).
So it all seems a bit premature. Attempting to reach a goal of USD1200 per month for an open source project is also quite an ambitious goal. It Took KiCad some 20 to 30 years to get there. But I’m curious where this is going.
Looks like Hackaday picked this up and posted without her knowledge. She says it isn’t ready for release and it is closed till then? Not a typical open source methodology but might as well reserve judgement? Not useful for me in any case.
I think this is not that uncommon, actually. The difference here is that she is publicizing that it is being developed (vs. developing it “secretly” and then publishing it as OSS).
Hi! I’m the person building KiCanvas. I agree it’s premature, but folks are excited and word is getting around. I’m doing my best to manage expectations.
A couple of things worth noting that might have been lost in the noise:
- I have reached my funding goal, I am not seeking additional sponsors.
- KiCanvas is not a product and certainly not a commercial product and won’t ever be. Once it’s released, it’ll be MIT licensed so everyone is free to do whatever they want with it.
- It’s not released yet because I’m not yet comfortable with people using it or relying on it. There’s a lot iteration, refactoring, and redesign that happens in these early phases and I don’t want people to have a bad experience when trying to use it or contribute to it. It needs a little more one-on-one time with me.
I hope that when KiCanvas is released that it lives up to my goals and the community’s expectations. I’m around here and the KiCAD Discord if anyone has questions or anything, and I’m regularly posting updates to social media.
If this will support library files it would be great to implement on the git merge request’s for previews.
definitely, one of the listed goals following the initial release is the ability to view symbols, footprints, and
libraries of those.
Note that a lot of KiCad features are developed this way too. Managing users and contributors is a lot of work on top of just trying to get your ideas out into code.
It could be worth keeping an eye on Framework for custom file views (#15390) · Issues · GitLab.org / GitLab · GitLab. It would be awesome if KiCanvas could be integrated to gitlab (and github) to allow viewing all hosted Open Hardware designs made in KiCad.
It is good to read all the affirmative opinions. 
Woe is me… getting far too cynical with age. 
Thea: KiCanvas looks like an interesting project. I recall wandering through your winterbloom site a year or so ago and seeing all your cool audio synth gizmos – done in kicad no doubt. You had posted some of your kicad library parts, and that is how I started taking a look at kicad and how I ended up here. You do some nice work 
Not wanting to add to your workload but a possible suggestion for a Footprint viewer would be the ability to add measurements. I always find I am checking pad measurements to make sure a footprint matches an unlisted/new component.
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