On Jan 30, 2009, at 11:01 AM, Steve Meier wrote: > This is a chicken and egg problem. > > With revenue in the billions the major eda tool companies have far > more > resources to keep developing capabilities.
Bloat and complexity are expensive for everybody. > > > On Fri, 2009-01-30 at 10:23 -0700, John Doty wrote: >> On Jan 29, 2009, at 11:40 PM, Steve Meier wrote: >> >>> Let us be clear on this concept. The EDA market place is in the 4 >>> to 5 >>> billion dollar range per year. >>> >>> http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/business/showArticle.jhtml? >>> articleID=175701340 >>> >>> You can do all the gorilla marketing that you want to end users who >>> are >>> tied to the dominant tool sets, but it won't do you any good. >> >> When Jobs and Wozniak were tinkering in that garage, the dominant >> computer hardware was System/370. They were wise not to try to >> compete with that. > > jobs and woz used a disruptive technology (the integrated circuit) to > compete with the bigger hardware. And FOSS is disruptive technology, for sure. > >> >>> If you >>> want to get these users to move to another tool set there has to >>> be a >>> migration path and an interoperability path. >> >> gEDA's interoperability at the netlist level is better than any other >> thing I've seen. Nobody has solved graphical interoperability here, >> and gEDA won't either. > > geda and pcb lag far behind in interoperability with other layout > programs and with vendor support for capabilities such as programming > their flying probe testers. I've never used pcb, so I can't comment. But gEDA is a great front end to every layout flow I've encountered. > > >> >>> >>> The issue isn't, is geda or kicad technologically competitive >>> tools, the >>> issue is can users move designs back and forth from the established >>> eda >>> tools and the free tools? >>> >>> If you answer yes then you reduce the risk of the users if you >>> answer no >>> then the safe action of the users is to stick with the tools that >>> they >>> know. >>> >> >> I think it's silly to think gEDA can go after the users who are >> locked in to the big tools. gEDA's natural users are those who are >> locked out by the high prices. Students, startups, part timers, ... >> >> If we give people a tool that gives them the leverage to do big jobs >> with small resources, the ones with small resources will adopt it, >> they'll thrive, and gEDA will ride to success on their coattails. >> > > sure for isolated developers but it is far harder to work with larger > organizations that want your files in the dominant eda file formats. I export netlists to a variety of customers who are using a variety of layout tools. gEDA is a champion at this. My customers are looking for big results on small budgets: I told one what it would cost for me to get a license for the big tool they liked, offered to use it (but they'd have to pay) and they declined to spend the extra $$. And they learned to use gEDA. > > Would open office be as big a player if it couldn't handle doc and xls > files? > Different game. The big tools can't even interoperate with each other: ever try to exchange a design with EDIF (shudder)? John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user