[Discuss] Free Hardware

Nancy Ouyang nancy.ouyang at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 08:47:29 UTC 2015


Ah -- this email was a little hard to find in this long thread, but I
thought people might enjoy a specific update with our thinking so far on
this front --

One useful thing to consider is that, at MIT, all course 2 majors with Mac
laptops end up installing Windows via bootcamp in order to run Solidworks
for their psets (for 2.007).

Additionally, the mechanical engineers at Apple all run Windows in order to
design the next generation of Macs / Apple products (probably all the
product designers they work with run Macs).

The suspicion is Apple might invest in open-source CAD tools the way they
invested in webkit and LLVM to promote having a good developer community
for iOS. They probably would like there to be good CAD software for
creative Mac people who want to use 3d printers, and they may also care
that their product engineers have to run Window.s

Additionally, Microsoft seems to want a "Ctrl-P" -> 3d printers option for
Windows.

If people have more ideas, feel free to add to the etherpad.

Thanks,
--Nancy


>  If we find a way to inject even a small fraction
> of the millions of dollars you mention into free tool development, I
> think the results could be game-changing. Maybe OSHWA could play a role
> here, as the FSF did with the development of gcc, emacs and other
> components necessary for the development of free software.
> Cheers,
> Javier
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