Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Stuart Brorson wrote: Therefore, I was wondering if other folks might be interested in getting occasional private e-mails from me alerting them to any such articles. Then, folks who felt moved could respond to the posts. That way it wouldn't only be me responding to these blog posts. Rather, we'd have a gEDA tag team doing guerilla marketing. Hello Stuart, do add me chitlesh [at] fedoraproject DOT org I do the same on the FEL mailing list. So I was wondering if there is some sort of mechanism that could automated the alert. After I left university, I still kept contact with some friends and we use google reader to share different blog posts that can be attractive to the others. So if you are sending url of those blog posts, I believe you track them via RSS feeds right? cheers, Chitlesh ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
al davis wrote: [ ... nice cover crop story, thanks!] So, for Zuken, the freeware version of Eagle, the freeware version of Multisim, the student version of Pspice What is the organic matter being added to the soil? What are the beneficial insects? For Eagle I really don't see beneficial insects. The fact that they did not introduce a hierarchy with V5 somehow makes me think it's more targeted at hobbyists. You can't do very large projects without a hierarchy (which gEDA provides). Seems they might have blown the backward compatibility. That could turn out to be a huge mistake. And finally: What are the weeds they want to choke out? Don't know for Zuken but for the others that didn't work. I have a lot of clients and the picture is very similar to office applications: Nearly all use OrCad for schematics, layouts are farmed out (I do the same), and everybody uses LTSpice which is free. There is one company that does provide their schematic capture for free, no strings attached, and without any strategic steamroller intentions: http://www.bartels.de/bae/baeprice_en.htm They simply do not charge for their schematic editor but layout and autorouter are not free. The owner is active in a German NG and he comes across as very down to earth and honest. I've test-driven it but it wasn't for me, my impression is that its more geared towards chip designers. AFAIR his company wrote their own CAD because they weren't happy with anything on the market. He probably wrote the bulk of it all by himself but they main biz is hardware. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
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. 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. 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. 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
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. 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. 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. 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. Would open office be as big a player if it couldn't handle doc and xls files? 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 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
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. FOSS is a disruptive technology when you have a large number of developers, Each working part time or being payed from their job. This isn't the case with geda. 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. I agree the geda works as a front end tool. But you can't take a geda schematic and send it to an orcad user and do them any good. Nor can you take an orcad file and use it. This is a very tall wall which stops people from being able to work together. 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)? A different game? I think not. See the tall wall discussion above. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Jan 30, 2009, at 12:23 PM, Steve Meier wrote: 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. FOSS is a disruptive technology when you have a large number of developers, Each working part time or being payed from their job. This isn't the case with geda. Well, I don't know. gEDA is certainly empowering me in a pretty radical way. But of course, you always have to use the strength of the tool, not fight against it. 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. I agree the geda works as a front end tool. Better than anything else around, I think. That's a major strength we should build upon. But you can't take a geda schematic and send it to an orcad user and do them any good. Never could take a Viewlogic schematic and send it to an Orcad user either. So there's nothing new here. Nor can you take an orcad file and use it. This is a very tall wall which stops people from being able to work together. Even the major commercial tools can't break down each other's walls. 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)? A different game? I think not. See the tall wall discussion above. Would you think it important to get TeX to read Word files? Versatile, effective toolkit versus bloated, inefficient tool. I hope gEDA stays versatile and effective. 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
John, Mentor Graphics provides schematic and board level translators www.mentor.com/products/pcb/pads/translators Altrium does as well and did about 55 million in sales last year. https://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/Moving+to+Altium+Designer+From +OrCAD Steve Meier On Fri, 2009-01-30 at 13:53 -0700, John Doty wrote: On Jan 30, 2009, at 12:23 PM, Steve Meier wrote: 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. FOSS is a disruptive technology when you have a large number of developers, Each working part time or being payed from their job. This isn't the case with geda. Well, I don't know. gEDA is certainly empowering me in a pretty radical way. But of course, you always have to use the strength of the tool, not fight against it. 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. I agree the geda works as a front end tool. Better than anything else around, I think. That's a major strength we should build upon. But you can't take a geda schematic and send it to an orcad user and do them any good. Never could take a Viewlogic schematic and send it to an Orcad user either. So there's nothing new here. Nor can you take an orcad file and use it. This is a very tall wall which stops people from being able to work together. Even the major commercial tools can't break down each other's walls. 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)? A different game? I think not. See the tall wall discussion above. Would you think it important to get TeX to read Word files? Versatile, effective toolkit versus bloated, inefficient tool. I hope gEDA stays versatile and effective. 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
These are importers, but you were talking about exporters before. But yes, there's more support for interoperabilty than I knew about. On Jan 30, 2009, at 2:28 PM, Steve Meier wrote: Mentor Graphics provides schematic and board level translators www.mentor.com/products/pcb/pads/translators Altrium does as well and did about 55 million in sales last year. Hmm, if they have a price on their site at all it's buried, suggesting big $$. If they're comparable to their competitors, $55 million is only a couple of thousand seats. gEDA may actually have more users than they do, as widely distributed as it is. So what are we worried about here, exactly? https://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/Moving+to+Altium+Designer+From +OrCAD This thread and others make me worry that we don't appreciate what we have in gEDA. 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
What I have been talking about is interoperability. How users can share projects even though they use different tools. GEDAs lack of exporting and importing limits the projects that a consultant can use it for. PCB's lack of exporting the pads ASCII makes it more difficult for assembly shops to programmer their flying probe tester. (translating PCB to and from pads ascii is one of my side pprojects) Steve Meier On Fri, 2009-01-30 at 16:55 -0700, John Doty wrote: These are importers, but you were talking about exporters before. But yes, there's more support for interoperabilty than I knew about. On Jan 30, 2009, at 2:28 PM, Steve Meier wrote: Mentor Graphics provides schematic and board level translators www.mentor.com/products/pcb/pads/translators Altrium does as well and did about 55 million in sales last year. Hmm, if they have a price on their site at all it's buried, suggesting big $$. If they're comparable to their competitors, $55 million is only a couple of thousand seats. gEDA may actually have more users than they do, as widely distributed as it is. So what are we worried about here, exactly? https://wiki.altium.com/display/ADOH/Moving+to+Altium+Designer+From +OrCAD This thread and others make me worry that we don't appreciate what we have in gEDA. 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 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Jan 30, 2009, at 5:23 PM, Steve Meier wrote: What I have been talking about is interoperability. Me too, but we differ on what kind of interoperability is important. How users can share projects even though they use different tools. I work with customers who either do their own layouts or have favored layout contractors. The variety of gnetlist back ends, and the ease of creating new ones, is a unique feature of gEDA that makes this business model possible. GEDAs lack of exporting and importing limits the projects that a consultant can use it for. It depends on what you need. For what *I* need here, gEDA is the best tool around. You may have different needs, but that doesn't justify your claim that gEDA lacks exporting facilities. If you were to say My work requires the specific capability to import X and export Y I could easily agree with you (and maybe somebody would chime in with a solution), but I cannot agree that this is a *general* weakness of gEDA. Specifically, exporting netlists to just about any other tool is a radical strength. PCB's lack of exporting the pads ASCII makes it more difficult for assembly shops to programmer their flying probe tester. (translating PCB to and from pads ascii is one of my side pprojects) That's a *specific* problem, of narrow interest (although I'm sure a solution would be welcomed). It does not indicate a general weakness. And the beauty of a radically flexible FOSS tool is that you can fix it. 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
Specifically, exporting netlists to just about any other tool is a radical strength. That's a *specific* problem, of narrow interest Where as I WAS! (and will no longer) talking about the general issues of having to share work with others like open office can with MS office. Steve Meier ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Jan 30, 2009, at 6:16 PM, Steve Meier wrote: Specifically, exporting netlists to just about any other tool is a radical strength. That's a *specific* problem, of narrow interest Where as I WAS! (and will no longer) talking about the general issues of having to share work with others like open office can with MS office. But *nobody* can do that in the EDA world. The commercial tools you mentioned can only import, not export. And (as an open office user) I would not want open office to be a model for gEDA: it copies all of the bloat, inflexibility, and bizarre, unpredictable behavior of the MS software it replaces. Its *only* advantage is that it's free. But gEDA is a superior toolkit. 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
John, If there exist two tools each that can import from the other then they can communicate. If person A can only speak German but can understand French and Germen. And person B can only speak French but can understand French and German then they can talk just fine. On Fri, 2009-01-30 at 18:32 -0700, John Doty wrote: On Jan 30, 2009, at 6:16 PM, Steve Meier wrote: Specifically, exporting netlists to just about any other tool is a radical strength. That's a *specific* problem, of narrow interest Where as I WAS! (and will no longer) talking about the general issues of having to share work with others like open office can with MS office. But *nobody* can do that in the EDA world. The commercial tools you mentioned can only import, not export. And (as an open office user) I would not want open office to be a model for gEDA: it copies all of the bloat, inflexibility, and bizarre, unpredictable behavior of the MS software it replaces. Its *only* advantage is that it's free. But gEDA is a superior toolkit. 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 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
GEDA is a Shark in a very small pond. On Fri, 2009-01-30 at 18:32 -0700, John Doty wrote: On Jan 30, 2009, at 6:16 PM, Steve Meier wrote: Specifically, exporting netlists to just about any other tool is a radical strength. That's a *specific* problem, of narrow interest Where as I WAS! (and will no longer) talking about the general issues of having to share work with others like open office can with MS office. But *nobody* can do that in the EDA world. The commercial tools you mentioned can only import, not export. And (as an open office user) I would not want open office to be a model for gEDA: it copies all of the bloat, inflexibility, and bizarre, unpredictable behavior of the MS software it replaces. Its *only* advantage is that it's free. But gEDA is a superior toolkit. 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 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
Stuart Brorson wrote: Hello -- I've seen an uptick in interesting industry news and industry blog postings related to zero-cost as well as open-source EDA software recently [1]. Here are two examples: http://www.eeproductcenter.com/embedded/brief/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212902950 What's your take on this? Why does Zuken give the tool away for free? I mean, that's almost like Costco swinging open the roll gate and allowing everyone to take what they need and not pay a penny. They would never do that. I only know of one other company that gives away their schematic editor, while you have to pay for layout and autorouter. [...] -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Jan 30, 2009, at 7:28 PM, Steve Meier wrote: If there exist two tools each that can import from the other then they can communicate. OK, so part of the problem from your perspective is that the commercial tools don't support their side of this deal with gEDA. ;-) GEDA is a Shark in a very small pond. Is the pond that small? gEDA is widely distributed. The companies that charge $30k/seat can't have very large customer bases, or they'd own the world. ;-) You seem to measure the size of the pond by revenue. But that doesn't work for FOSS. For me, the pond is measured by how far you can swim. With gEDA, it's a long way. Big, complex boards, mixed-signal VLSI, ... 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Friday 30 January 2009, Joerg wrote: What's your take on this? Why does Zuken give the tool away for free? A while back, on another mailing list (Free Software Business, f...@crynwr.com), 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 Zuken, the freeware version of Eagle, the freeware version of Multisim, the student version of Pspice 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:17:47 -0500, al davis wrote: because it describes my feeling well... To me, the trial-, academic-, crippled-, whatsoever-licenses just look like baits to lure users into vendor lock-in. Give-away now, cash-in later, when hooked. Just happened last week at my university day-job: An eagle schematics provided by colleague at a different institute could not be opened for editing with eagle v4 because it was saved with eagle v5. This resulted in cash-flow at CadSoft for an update of our multi-user license. There is no option to save in backward compatible format... ---(kaimartin)--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak http://lilalaser.de/blog ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
I don't know about guerilla marketing, but it might help to tell people about successful gEDA projects. Matt Ettus (http:// www.ettus.com) has apparently built a thriving business around free hardware designed with gEDA. My friends at MIT and Espace, Inc. are using his products to upgrade the HETE communication stations to support a variety of space missions, basically anything the dishes are suited for, rather than just the frequency/modulation used by a single mission. Of course, most professional gEDA projects are proprietary, so you can't show people much. However there's my ASIC work with Osaka University, which has spawned several papers, so you can read *about* it: www.noqsi.com/images/DeltaSigmaDigitization_SPIE.pdf ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4436263/4437154/04437195.pdf?arnumber=4437195 ndip.in2p3.fr/ndip08/Presentations/3Tuesday/A-Midi/98-Nakajima.pdf The first paper mentions gEDA and ngspice. A few names are named, too. ;-) I'm thinking of publishing the project itself, but as a project it's rather disorganized, and I'd want to clean that up. I've learned a lot about organizing big gEDA projects over the last few years. 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
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
on-topic plugOur little company, Evil Mad Science LLC ( http://evilmadscience.com/ ) has a similar model-- Most of our products are open source hardware kits that were designed in gEDA. We're not shy about it; whenever possible, we point out that the projects were done with gEDA, and we make the design files available in pcb format. It is a goal of ours to increase adoption of open-source hardware tools; I think we've actually managed to get quite a number of people to look at gEDA with our designs. :) /on-topic plug I don't know about guerilla marketing, but it might help to tell people about successful gEDA projects. Matt Ettus (http:// www.ettus.com) has apparently built a thriving business around free hardware designed with gEDA. My friends at MIT and Espace, Inc. are using his products to upgrade the HETE communication stations to support a variety of space missions, basically anything the dishes are suited for, rather than just the frequency/modulation used by a single mission. Of course, most professional gEDA projects are proprietary, so you can't show people much. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 17:34 -0500, Stuart Brorson wrote: I suspect that interest in both zero-cost *and* true FOSS EDA stuff will increase as the world economy continues to tank That would certainly be nice. FWIW, I've seen folks use various licenses with different degrees of success for open hardware projects. I personally like the TAPR Open Hardware License, http://tapr.org/ohl. That plus GPL for firmware and CC by-sa 3.0 for related documentation seems like a very workable mix. See http://altusmetrum.org for what I'm currently hacking on with friends using gEDA. Bdale ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 15:38 -0500, Windell H. Oskay wrote: on-topic plugOur little company, Evil Mad Science LLC ( http://evilmadscience.com/ ) has a similar model-- Most of our products are open source hardware kits that were designed in gEDA. We're not shy about it; whenever possible, we point out that the projects were done with gEDA, and we make the design files available in pcb format. It is a goal of ours to increase adoption of open-source hardware tools; I think we've actually managed to get quite a number of people to look at gEDA with our designs. :) /on-topic plug If you've got a spare bit of board space, and the inclination to help advertise the project, why not drop a gEDA logo onto your boards (attached). Would be fun to see how / where we can get the logo ;) I suspect those doing space-flight applications might claim to win there though. Best wishes, -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) geda_logo.pcb Description: application/pcb-layout ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
Bdale Garbee wrote: FWIW, I've seen folks use various licenses with different degrees of success for open hardware projects. Would you elaborate on the degrees of success you have seen? I'm launching that kind of business myself. Kits and TAPR licensed open hardware systems for field biologists, to start. John Griessen -- Ecosensory Austin TX ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
On Friday 30 January 2009, Steve Meier wrote: 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. That's one of the reasons I suggested the need for a bi-directional translator system, with ideas for doing it, a while back. It also needs to link to other tools and provide a path for new ones. It is a good project for summer of code. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
Hello -- I've seen an uptick in interesting industry news and industry blog postings related to zero-cost as well as open-source EDA software recently [1]. Here are two examples: http://www.eeproductcenter.com/embedded/brief/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212902950 http://www.edn.com/blog/92692/post/1290038929.html Occasionally I am moved to post a reply to the article as a way to raise awareness of the gEDA Project, as well as other FOSS projects like Kicad, opencircuitdesign, etc. However, I don't like to do too much of this since if I respond to all the FUD out there, then I become just a crank, which doesn't raise any awareness. Being a crank is bad for everybody, including the gEDA Project. Therefore, I was wondering if other folks might be interested in getting occasional private e-mails from me alerting them to any such articles. Then, folks who felt moved could respond to the posts. That way it wouldn't only be me responding to these blog posts. Rather, we'd have a gEDA tag team doing guerilla marketing. If you're interested in helping get the word out, please e-mail me privately at sdb (at) cloud9 (dot) net. I'll just put you on my list of recipients and I'll occasionally send you a heads-up e-mail about some post I have read somewhere. You can decide to do nothing, or if you're feeling energetic, you can respond to that post. Also, I promise not to sell your e-mail addr to any spammers. :-) Thanks, Stuart [1] I suspect that interest in both zero-cost *and* true FOSS EDA stuff will increase as the world economy continues to tank, so this is an opportunity for us true FOSS people to get the word out about gEDA to the wider engineering world. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Guerilla marketing...
Stuart Brorson wrote: I was wondering if other folks might be interested in getting occasional private e-mails from me alerting them to any such articles. Then, folks who felt moved could respond to the posts. Sure Stuart. John ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
