Hi Javier,
As the KiCad project leader and as a developer who was with the project
when CERN initially made it's decision to support KiCad, I would like to
extend my sincerest thanks to all of the help that CERN has provided.
From handling donations to paying for developer time, CERN has given
KiCad the support to get project to the place it is today. It has been
a privilege working with everyone at CERN and I am looking forward to
years of cooperation to come.
Many Thanks,
Wayne
On 9/28/23 2:55 AM, Javier Serrano wrote:
Dear all,
With this message I would like to inform you of an important milestone
at CERN regarding our support to KiCad development. Below you will
find a more lengthy version with some historical context and
rationale, but the short of it is that we are going to stop our
donations programme
<https://cernandsocietyfoundation.cern/projects/kicad-development> and
we have started paying for a support contract with KiCad Services
Corporation <https://www.kipro-pcb.com/> (KSC). We think the donations
programme is now a bit redundant with the other two options to donate.
For reference, people can give through an account made available by
<https://donate.kicad.org/>KSC <https://donate.kicad.org/> and through
the Linux Foundation
<https://crowdfunding.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/projects/kicad>. In both
cases, the use of money from donations is decided exclusively by the
KiCad project. We now believe that KiCad is at a level of features and
quality which makes it suitable for many of the PCB designs at CERN.
The natural way for us to keep supporting it is, as for other EDA/CAD
tools, to pay a commercial company to support CERN users through a
dedicated group in CERN’s IT Department. As of today, we will close
our donations site and we will use the remaining money to subcontract
development tasks to KiCad lead developers, as we have done so far.
This is an appropriate moment to thank all the KiCad community for
their impressive work and for providing such a pleasurable environment
for discussing and contributing to the enhancement of this great tool.
Special thanks also to all our donors, who have enabled us to
contribute many important features through the years, and to the CERN
& Society Foundation for their continuous support in this endeavour.
Cheers,
Javier
Longer version
The start of our contributions to KiCad was linked with our Open
Hardware strategy in the BE-CO-HT section at CERN. Discussions started
in 2008
<https://www.oshwa.org/research/brief-history-of-open-source-hardware-organizations-and-definitions/>.
We had identified the lack of high-quality FOSS PCB design tools as
one of the obstacles to effectively share our designs. It took some
time for discussions to crystallise in the decision to join KiCad
development. That happened in 2011. The two main actors at CERN at
that time, and for many years after that, were Tomasz Włostowski and
Maciej “Orson” Sumiński. Together, they brought a great number of
features to KiCad, and also spent a lot of effort in the thankless
task of organising, refactoring and generally helping clean up the
huge code base so as to provide a solid foundation for future
evolution. In 2013, we started a donations programme through the CERN
& Society Foundation. In-kind contributions (i.e. code by Tom and
Orson) started ramping down while we used donations to pay lead
developers outside CERN to work on new features. That scheme has been
very successful and thanks to the efforts of our friends at C&S has
remained in force until now. We organised the first EDA devroom at
FOSDEM in 2015
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/electronic_design_automation/>,
and that devroom quickly became a meeting place for the KiCad
development community. I had the pleasure to coordinate it also, with
slightly varying themes, in 2016
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/track/eda/>, 2017
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/electronic_design_automation_eda/>,
2018
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware/>
and 2019
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware/>,
and Seth Hillbrand took over for 2020
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/track/open_source_computer_aided_modeling_and_design/>,
2021
<https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/track/open_source_computer_aided_modeling_and_design/>
and 2022
<https://fosdem.org/2022/schedule/track/computer_aided_modeling_and_design/>.
Since 2011, we have directly or indirectly contributed many features
to KiCad, including a unified geometry library, the push & shove
router, a new graphics engine with GPU acceleration, a new framework
for editing tools, new footprint and symbol editors, the library
browser, a redesigned DRC engine, the inspector tool, support for
differential pair and bus routing, and many others. Our commercial
support contract now includes the possibility of paying for new
features, and we have started using that possibility, so our
contributions to KiCad’s code base will continue in that form. There
are currently two KiCad lead developers affiliated with CERN: Roberto
and Tom. Their lead development activities happen outside CERN time,
but their help as KiCad experts (along with Orson’s) will be
invaluable as CERN IT and the CERN drawing office provide the tool,
and PCB design services based on it, on a more widespread and official
basis.
Helping take KiCad to the point where this transition could be
envisaged has been quite a ride. We have had the chance to interact
with extremely talented and welcoming individuals. As I look back, I
want to explicitly acknowledge the initial contribution of Jean-Pierre
Charras, who started KiCad development on his own to provide his
students in Grenoble with a tool they could take home. The last time I
spoke with JP, he told me KiCad is now in good hands, and I can only
agree. Thank you JP, Wayne, Seth and the rest of the lead dev team,
also past members, librarians, translators and the whole KiCad
community. We are fortunate to be part of this collective endeavour
and look forward to more exciting developments in KiCad.
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