On Tuesday 18 September 2007, Andy Peters wrote: > They are in a binary format. The program is smart enough to > know which models are spice models and which are the > proprietary binary models. The format is not published so > far all calls to open it have been ignored. > > There's also some legalese about how the models are > proprietary and cannot be reverse-engineered, etc etc.
The dreaded proprietary lock-in. Our biggest enemy. It's a "cover-crop"....... A while back, on another mailing list ("Free Software Business, [EMAIL PROTECTED]), there was a posting about the concept of a "cover crop" in marketing. I will now take the liberty to repeat the posting, because it describes my feeling well... =========================== begin quote For example, many companies are using what you might call a "Cover Crop" pattern. (Instead of borrowing military terms for marketing all the time, let's use one from agriculture.) http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/newsltr/v7n3/sa-8.htm You plant a cover crop not to harvest and eat it, but to add nitrogen and organic matter to the soil, encourage a population of beneficial insects, and to choke out weeds that would otherwise grow up to compete with your regular crop. Some examples of the cover crop pattern are: * MSFT Visual Studio 60-day license in C# books (beneficial insects: the ones that can code in C#; weeds choked out: the next Turbo Pascal * MSIE included with pre-installed MSFT Windows (nitrogen in the soil: MSIE-compatible web sites; weeds choked out...well, IANAL) * warez copies of Adobe Photoshop * academic discount programs * ubiquitous PHP and MySQL in every Linux distribution, and on every web hosting site Cover crops tend to be very cheap and easy to plant, compared to the main crop that you're protecting. (And they're not just for established fields -- a recommended part of clearing land is to plant a "green manure" crop to be plowed under before planting the real pasture or crop.) The benefits of a cover crop probably wouldn't be worth it if it cost much more. So part of "Cover Crop" as a business model design pattern would be that low cost distribution is more important than high-information-feedback distribution. end quote ========================== So, for LT-spice .... What is the "organic matter" being added to the soil? What are the "beneficial insects?" And finally: What are the "weeds" they want to choke out? _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user