[Discuss] [Open Manufacturing] Lady Ada interviews Autodesk after EAGLE purchase

[Tom Igoe]

Thanks Javier,

For those who’ve been hooked on Eagle forever, is there a guide to transitioning to Kicad available anywhere?  Perhaps instructions on converting your libraries, or what to look out for when migrating a project from Eagle to Kicad?  I think for many people, the desire to do the open-source thing is only going to take them part of the way. Instructions and guides and easy translation are a big help too.

Tom

> On Jul 6, 2016, at 4:11 AM, Javier Serrano <Javier.Serrano at cern.ch> wrote:
> 
> [[not sure I have the right to send email to all these lists, giving it
> a try anyway]]
> 
> On 07/06/2016 05:45 AM, Nancy Ouyang wrote:
>> lolwut. Autodesk bought Eagle?!  
>> https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/07/05/exclusive-interview-with-autodesk-about-the-cadsoft-eagle-purchase-autodesk-cadsofttech-technolomaniac/
> 
> Thanks for the link!
> 
>> yay for free 6 layer!
> 
> Free as in beer "to students and faculty for non-commercial work."
> 
>> in other words, go KiCAD go! i'm rooting for you :3
> 
> Thanks! The KiCad [1] project leader, Wayne Stambaugh, is actually
> spending this week with us at CERN, working with 5 other people in what
> turned out to be an improvised KiCad mini-hackathon. In my view, the
> reasons to use Eagle over KiCad have very quickly shrunk to zero. As we
> are preparing the roadmap for the next stable release, I would be very
> interested in people's opinions about missing features and UI quirks in
> KiCad.
> 
> We are also seeing a slow-but-steady increase in the number of people
> who volunteer to contribute to KiCad development. If anybody here would
> like to participate, please email me off list. We can use all sorts of
> help, not only software development. For example, I think we could
> really do with a user experience (UX) person. PCB fab houses also tell
> us they get more and more KiCad files, and some are asking how they can
> help.
> 
> For those of you new to the subject: the big difference between KiCad
> and Eagle is that KiCad is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) [2].
> KiCad gives you the same type of freedoms on your software as the ones
> you get in hardware when you use a licence compliant with the OSHW
> definition. In particular, there is no constraint on your ability to
> copy, distribute and modify the software as much as you want. In my
> opinion, a FOSS toolset is key to OSHW development. Only with a good
> FOSS toolset you can guarantee that anybody will be able to open, modify
> and share back your design files now and in the future, without any
> artificial constraint. An open file format is only a step in the right
> direction, and you get that necessarily with any FOSS tool.
> 
> If you are less into freedom and more into features, I invite you to
> compare the feature list. One example: 6 layers free for students and
> faculty for non-commercial work vs. 32 layers free for everyone to do
> whatever they like, including of course commercial work.
> 
> I think it's a matter of time until most OSHW work gets done using FOSS
> tools. The question is how long it will take. Please help us so this can
> happen sooner rather than later!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Javier
> 
> [1] http://kicad-pcb.org/
> [2] GEDA is another example of a FOSS EDA tool.
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