Re: gEDA-user: FUNDING (was: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB)

[myken <myken@xxxxxx>]

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 â0,02

Robert.




_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user