Re: gEDA-user: Design Nark

[Colin D Bennett <colin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:01:13 +0100
Andy Fierman <andyfierman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Is it just me being a Grumpy Old Man or does anyone else take issue
> with RS over their advertising for their Design Spark EDA tool?

Everyone should demand truth in advertising!  ...Grumpy Old Men and
Irreverent Young Kids alike.

> In particular the statement at the end of the last paragraph in:
> 
> http://www.designspark.com/content/designspark-pcb-version-2-takes-pcb-design-another-dimension
> 
> that "With the release of DesignSpark PCB Version 2, RS has reaffirmed
> its commitment to delivering the best open source experience to its
> engineering community."

That statement is obviously false:  DesignSpark is not open source (no
matter what understanding of âopen sourceâ one holds).

> I suppose RS do only claim to be delivering whatever it is that they
> are delivering, "to its engineering community.", i.e. not to anyone
> else's.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

> To a lesser extent I find the statement here:
> 
> http://www.designspark.com/theme/designspark-pcb
> 
> that "DesignSpark PCB is the world's most powerful free of charge PCB
> design tool." a bit presumptuous too.

In advertising, everyone uses superlatives, when clearly all the
competing products cannot simultaneously be the best.  An objective
side-by-side comparison of alternatives is always useful.

What is RS's criteria for âmost powerfulâ PCB design tool?  Personally,
I am scared of having my designs locked down by a proprietary tool.
What if DesignSpark is discontinued next year or RS decides to start
charging $$$ for it?  Will I be able to still access, edit, and
manipulate my designs ten years from now, when all computers are
128-bit 64-core ARMv24 machines running Linux 3.0 and the new
Windows 2022 is available only as a pay-by-the-hour cloud computing
service with built-in pop-up ads?
... Maybe an extreme example, but really: what if DesignSpark was
discontinued next year, and didn't support Windows 8?

The openness and simplicity of the gEDA file formats and the free and
open nature of the software itself, not to mention decent (?) platform
independence, make it a stellar choice for future-proofing your designs.

Regards,
Colin


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