Re: gEDA-user: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB

[Stephen Ecob <silicon.on.inspiration@xxxxxxxxx>]

> 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 ?


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