Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/09/08/18:53:24
Nicklas Karlsson wrote:
>> gEDA has already lost to KiCad.
>
> No it is possible to make gEDA better whenever we want.
Back in 2006, when I started my journey into open source EDA land, geda
was the undisputed favorite among all affordable alternatives. This
applied not only for enthusiasts with specific partialities or users whose
use cases deviated significantly from the main stream. It was true for the
very generic use case "schematic->layout->PCB". Not only was geda the only
suite which beat eagle hands down in usability. It also scaled reasonably
well and even supported hierarchical design.
This pole position got lost to kicad.
Unlike other EDA projects in 2006, geda had a lively community of
developers. I remember notes of real-life meetings which made me envious
to not live in the Boston area. There was a busy user mailing list and
another for development. IRC, both were open for everyone to read and
write. And there was a regular date on IRC where geda people met for a
chat. By contrast, kicad looked pretty much like a one-man-show back then.
Unfortunately, this changed gradually but continuously on the geda side.
Climate on the user mailing list got chilly. Patches presented by users
were ignored until they bit rot. The dev list got closed for mere users.
First it was read-only. Then, read was also off-limits for non-devs. For a
time, the user mailing list had the moderated flag in place. Meaning,
mails by users to the user mailing list needed the approval of a dev to be
actually delivered.
All of this lead to frustration and did not help to motivate contribute.
Long term developers phased out of the project. Hardly any user ramped up
their engagement and become a dev themselves. In a sense, the project had
entered a downward spiral.
At the same time the kicad project managed to go the other way: It had an
expanding developer group. Its user base grew by the day, progress
accelerated. Features that had seemed way behind the horizon got
implemented. This in turn pulled in more users and even an organization
like the CERN. So yes, geda has currently lost on all but very
specifically defined metrics to kicad.
But today is not the end of time. Open source history is speckled with
examples of two or more successful projects for the same task. Think
geda/KDE, libreoffice/latex, git/svn, mediawiki/dokuwiki, python/php/perl
...
I am happy to see a significant change of climate transpired from the
current participants on this mailing list. I'd say this includes devs and
users. Discussions this summer have been way more productive than any time
I remember. It is not just talk. The gschem recently saw the first UI
improvements in years (thank Erich!). Long lingering patches on launchpad
get applied (thank you, Traumflug!). There is a move toward python (thank
you Roland!). New developers spread their wings (thank you DJ!).
All of these do not make geda suddenly be better by orders of magnitude.
But they represent change for a better future.
---<)kaimartin(>---
--
Kai-Martin Knaak tel: +49-511-762-2895
Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik fax: +49-511-762-2211
Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de
GPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=Knaak+kmk&op=get
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