Re: gEDA-user: gEDA gets some great press!

[Al Davis <ad62@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 14 December 2004 01:54 pm, John Eaton wrote:
> It always irk's me when someone says that Open Source isn't
> "professional caliber" or lacks user support.

But remember who said that.  It is just a vendor defending his 
own product,  It is a vendor of low end cad, that could be 
threatened by open source.  Although we don't like that, it is 
really to be expected.

We really should take that as a challenge.  Take a critical look 
at our own stuff, and ask what it would take to make it truly 
"professional caliber".  In particular, look at how the tools 
interact.

What really irks me is when educators say that.  Too many 
schools with EE programs use only proprietary software and 
black box proprietary hardware.  Often they use the "free" 
version of proprietary software, that is crippled so it is just 
adequate for homework assignments, then they back down on the 
material taught to make it fit the crippled software.  Then at 
the senior/grad level, they buy the full version, but only for 
the lab, so the students need to actually go to the lab to do 
simple simulations.  They live in the lab, just to use 
proprietary software.  Then they graduate, and can't rerun 
their own lab experiments because they don't have the 
proprietary software, or the license expired.  I will shut up 
now.