Has anyone contacted the Linux Foundation yet? I spotted a liberal sprinkling of the k…-pcb.org links on this announcement: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/kicad-joins-linux-foundation-to-advance-electronic-design-automation/
I don’t know if they can go and update old press releases…
I’m nobody to them, so I don’t know if they would pay attention to me even if I could figure out whom to contact.
@NatashaABaker, I noticed that in at least one SnapEDA blog post there’s a link to kicad-pcb. Is it possible to update those blog posts?
The current documentation still has some old links: https://docs.kicad.org/5.1/en/getting_started_in_kicad/getting_started_in_kicad.html#download-and-install-kicad
Some sites have published this in their news.
And google finds also several posts in different kinds of forums, lists etc. announcing this, written by some KiCad developer or user. We got pretty good visibility.
It’s an utter pita to rebuild the docs…it’s on my todo list.
I just checked a model train forum I am also a member of where KiCad is occasionally mentioned (mostly by me) and found one link to the old Kicad web site. I posted a request asking the original poster to modify the imbedded link. Hopefully it gets changed…
All website doc content has been rebuilt
This is probably complete, but just in case it’s useful, I’ve had to speed this process up before:
(Followed of course by rebuilding HTML)
I firmly believe it’s fair and important to make known the later mailing list discussion where Dick Hollenbeck stated that he hadn’t got an offer. Wayne confirmed this:
Dick is correct. I dropped the ball on this after our last email as it
just fell off of my radar with everything that is going on. Mea culpa.
To me it seems that the team attempted but due to human factors it didn’t succeed, and no one person is to blame alone. Blaming is futile anyway. Whether someone should have acted differently is pure speculation from our (other than the directly involved parties) part.
I say this because this has already led to broken telephone effect and personal insults on some forums. They are the last thing the KiCad project or any Open Source project needs.
I disagree because forgetting things is completely normal and professionalism dictates pursuing followup which appears not done.
No. That is not how this is going to exist. There is no both-sideism here.
There is one person who was in control of the domain name that was used by the KiCad project. There is one person who sold the domain name without giving the KiCad team even the option of bidding against whoever purchased it.
This was not an innocent mistake or a misunderstanding. This was a deliberate action by one person.
Dick may be many things but he is not dumb. He knew both what he was doing and the effect it would have on the KiCad community.
OK, I understand. -------------
Hi all
I believe the old domain is hosting an outdated version of the KiCad site. I’m not sure if this is malicious, but there are downloads to the ‘latest version’ - 5.1.6!
Video(sorry for the audio):
Thanks for the heads up. This is starting to look very bad.
My gosh this seems particularly dangerous. If they are not malicious, why wouldn’t they own up to who they are and what they are doing? (And then provide a link to kicad.org.?)
Oh, also the KiCad website source repo on GitHub still points to the old domain:
I just noticed that there’s a link to the old domain in https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-website. (EDIT: ah, Sonosus pointed it out.)
The dates in the current kicad-pcb site make me wonder if they have copied the “latest” website code from github, the last commit there is from Jul 22 2020. (EDIT: no, it seems to be an earlier version.)
Naturally the expectation is that they will mostly keep it but inject something malicious, and/or add ads.
I noticed that they conveniently deleted the installer verification guide. It looks like the download link points to the official mirror, but who knows how long that will last.
Seems to be registered with godaddy. Not sure if sending them a heads up would help. If Kicad is trademarked that might provide some leverage.
We’re working that angle in background.
If anyone wants to help, please contact sites that still link to the old domain