Hello all, On Thu, 2010-12-09 at 21:55 +1100, Stephen Ecob wrote: > > I'm aiming to finish University in a few months.. if people would > > like to fund work on the toporouter, then I would be pretty keen to > > work on it full time. > > > > Regards, > > Anthony > > Good, we've established that money could help to improve gEDA :) What > I'm *very* unsure of is whether we could raise enough to make a > difference. Does anyone have any idea of how many of us make > commercial use of gEDA ? > As a business user I face the fact that if I choose to use commercial > EDA software such as Altium then I'll pay $4K every year for a program > that will make me go prematurely bald as I pull my hair out in > frustration at bugs that I have no power to fix. I've chosen to use > free software instead. Yes, PCB has many shortcomings - but I'm free > to fix them. My business is just starting up, so cashflow is tight. > At this stage I'm more inclined to contribute to gEDA by coding myself > than by paying others to do it for me - but in the future I may have > less time and more money. At that stage paying others to improve gEDA > would make good business sense. I could easily justify $4K per year, > perhaps more - businesses who use Cadence or Zuken are probably paying > >$20K per year. One business contributing $4K per year is almost > insignificant - but 10 could achieve something worthwhile, 50 could > fund a full time developer. But it's nothing more than a pipe dream > unless there are others out there who think the same. > Does anyone else think the same ? >
I think the same, but I am also in the same position (start-up, tight cashflow). I use gEDA professionally (as a freelancer) but only for a few (1 or 2) small projects a year. If my situation changes (more money, more projects) I have no objection to a donation to the gEDA project. I'm trying to contribute to the project but it's a steep learning curve. I also agree with Levente, as the cheap Dutchman that I am, I like to see where my money will be spend. Just my €0,02 Robert. _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user