gEDA project in EE Times today!

[Don Prescott]

It's OK calling Cadence names, and I've seen far worse when the name
Microsoft is mentioned, but few if any engineering VPs would allow an
open source EDA toolset to be used if there is a viable commercial
product available. Who in there right mind would consider using an
open source wordprocessing package or spreadsheets instead of the
commercial products like Word and Excel. Of course not.

What these people fail to appreciate is that these products are
software "tools", to be picked-up, used, put down. If I have a $500K
project I sure ain't gonna screw around with an open source CAD
product....

Prescott

 

[Ken Smith]

It's OK calling Cadence names, and I've seen far worse when the name
Microsoft is mentioned, but few if any engineering VPs would allow an
open source EDA toolset to be used if there is a viable commercial
product available. Who in there right mind would consider using an
open source wordprocessing package or spreadsheets instead of the
commercial products like Word and Excel. Of course not.

<start flame war mode>
Who in their right mind would use Word or Excel when Open Office is less
buggy and free.

Who in their right mind would buy a C compiler where gcc can do the job
better.

Who in their right mind would risk their project being orphaned by tieing
their future to an undocumented file format.


Control the language and you control the debate but control the tools and
you control all of civilization. Every time you use someones proprietary
file format you risk dooming your children to living as slaves in a new
dark age drought about because no-one knows how to read the files that
make the machines work.

 

[DJ Delorie]

What these people fail to appreciate is that these products are
software "tools", to be picked-up, used, put down.

What *you* people fail to appreciate is that, like all tools, it's
important to choose the right one for the job.

If I have a $500K project I sure ain't gonna screw around with an
open source CAD product....

But if you need a $20 PCB as an adjunct to some $500K project, perhaps
a small inexpensive CAD product *is* the right tool for the job. I
expect EDA engineers to be smart enough to choose wisely. If a $20K
CAD package is the right tool, it's the right tool, and as one of the
PCB developers I would discourage using PCB for those tasks. But if
something like PCB is sufficient for your project, I would encourage
EDA engineers to evaluate it based on its merits, rather than blindly
discarding it based on the fact that it's open source.

So put the politics aside and be engineers for a change, and decide
which tool to use based on which tool is the right tool for the job at
hand.

 

[Chaos Master]

Don Prescott executed a NOP:

It's OK calling Cadence names, and I've seen far worse when the name
Microsoft is mentioned, but few if any engineering VPs would allow an
open source EDA toolset to be used if there is a viable commercial
product available. Who in there right mind would consider using an
open source wordprocessing package or spreadsheets instead of the
commercial products like Word and Excel. Of course not.

I have a license for MS-Office and I use both MS-Office and OpenOffice.
Both do they work.

Excel runs some add-ins that aren't available for OpenOffice, like
Solver.

[]s
--
Chaos Master®, posting from Canoas, Brazil - 29.55° S / 51.11° W

"People told me I can't dress like a fairy.
I say, I'm in a rock band and I can do what the hell I want!"
-- Amy Lee

NOTE: messages are automatically sent after 00:00AM! I'm on dial-up!

 

[Mac]

It's OK calling Cadence names, and I've seen far worse when the name
Microsoft is mentioned, but few if any engineering VPs would allow an
open source EDA toolset to be used if there is a viable commercial
product available. Who in there right mind would consider using an
open source wordprocessing package or spreadsheets instead of the
commercial products like Word and Excel. Of course not.

Well, I believe a lot of companies would consider using open office.

What these people fail to appreciate is that these products are
software "tools", to be picked-up, used, put down.

It seems to me that you are failing to make any kind of argument here.
So these products are software tools. OK. How does that favor proprietary
versus open source versions of these tools?

If I have a $500K
project I sure ain't gonna screw around with an open source CAD
product....

No, I wouldn't screw-around with it either. But I might use it to do my
project if it were up to the task.

Prescott

--Mac

 

[Malcolm Reeves]

Who in there right mind would consider using an
open source wordprocessing package or spreadsheets instead of the
commercial products like Word and Excel. Of course not.

This is posted onto the internet on which the majority of servers (80%
I think I read somewhere) are using apache and linux, freeware, open
source projects, not MS products as they are not reliable/bug free
enough.

Of course all these could be wrong and you could be right .

There is nothing wrong with open source if the product is popular.
I'm not sure EDA is there but it could be.


--

Malcolm

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - www.CharteredConsultant.co.uk - The Consultant A-List

 

[Active8]

Don Prescott executed a NOP:

I have a license for MS-Office and I use both MS-Office and OpenOffice.
Both do they work.

Excel runs some add-ins that aren't available for OpenOffice, like
Solver.

Have you created Excel docs in both apps with no probs using the
file in the other product? With my first Open Office, one app or the
other complained about something it didn't like regarding the file I
opened.

 

[Chaos Master]

This is Active8 for forever:

Have you created Excel docs in both apps with no probs using the
file in the other product? With my first Open Office, one app or the
other complained about something it didn't like regarding the file I
opened.

Depends on the features you used in each program, but I have never had
compatibility problems with simple spreadsheets.

But I almost don't use spreadsheets at all.

[]s
--
Chaos Master®, posting from Canoas, Brazil - 29.55° S / 51.11° W

"People told me I can't dress like a fairy.
I say, I'm in a rock band and I can do what the hell I want!"
-- Amy Lee

NOTE: messages are automatically sent after 00:00AM! I'm on dial-up!

 

[Chaos Master]

This is Chaos Master for forever:

Depends on the features you used in each program, but I have never had
compatibility problems with simple spreadsheets.

But I almost don't use spreadsheets at all.

EDIT THIS:

instead of ... at all, read "... at all, unless I have an specific
problem to solve that would be optimal for usage of spreadsheet"
--
Chaos Master®, posting from Canoas, Brazil - 29.55° S / 51.11° W

"People told me I can't dress like a fairy.
I say, I'm in a rock band and I can do what the hell I want!"
-- Amy Lee

NOTE: messages are automatically sent after 00:00AM! I'm on dial-up!

 

[David]

It's OK calling Cadence names, and I've seen far worse when the name
Microsoft is mentioned, but few if any engineering VPs would allow an
open source EDA toolset to be used if there is a viable commercial

I would ask who in thier right mind would use pay for a commercial toolset
with vendor-lockin if there is a viable open-source alternative? It's a
matter of choosing the right tool for the right job - the cost of the
package, locked file formats, and locked source code are some of the
considerations - as are support, reliability, ease-of-use, features, etc.
Only the most Dilbertesque PHB would assume that paying more money
automatically means getting a better product.

product available. Who in there right mind would consider using an
open source wordprocessing package or spreadsheets instead of the
commercial products like Word and Excel. Of course not.

Bad examples - a steadily increasing number of organisations are moving to
Open Office (or Star Office, which is the same thing marketed to PHB's who
want to pay for it so that they know who to sue if there is a problem).
Personally, I haven't used Word since version 2 on Win311, and even then
it was only for one document.

What these people fail to appreciate is that these products are
software "tools", to be picked-up, used, put down. If I have a $500K
project I sure ain't gonna screw around with an open source CAD
product....

And I ain't gonna screw around installing a virus-magnet word processor
when there are perfectly good open-source alternatives that do the job
better. I'll use commercial tools (which are often backed by open
source ones, such as Quartus for fpga design - built on open-source perl,
tcl, cygwin, gcc, gdb, eclipse, etc.) and open source tools in whatever
mix fits best.