Re: gEDA-user: Land pattern naming convention per IPC

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

Hi --

>   I was thinking of writing a Perl script for those files but I wasn't
> sure whether translating those files is a copyright violation. I do
> not believe that there is copyright protection
> for the underlying data although there may be for the creative
> organization of the data.

Yeah, this is a hairy area.  The IPC makes you *pay* for their
standards docs.  One presumes they hold copyright on the docs.  But
what about the actual footprint specs?  Do you need a licence to
create a conformant footprint?  Probably not.  But what are the exact
legal requirements?  I don't know.

Also, if you write a program which munges their possibly
copyrighted but freely downloadable footprint files, is that a
violation of anything?  Are their files copyrighted?  If you rip
dimensional data out of their files using a script & use it to build
your own footprints, do you violate any possible copyright?  These are
Lawrence Lessing questions. . . . 

Maybe the safest thing to do with their footprint spec files is to
just distribute the Perl prog without the derived footprint files, and
let individual users do their own symbol ripping.  

As for your own footprints, naming them using IPC7351 nomenclature
is a good idea IMO.  Also, putting the mfr name as a suffix makes
sense to me.  

It's not clear to me that the IPC7351 standard requires the footprints
named according to their convention to also use exactly the
dimensional data they specify.  Any thoughts about that?

Stuart



> 
>   I am thinking of renaming all of my footprints to conform to
> IPC7351. My only issue
> is that some of the manufacfurer recommendations for particular packages di=
> ffer.
> How do you resolve the differences in the naming convention? My
> thought was to attach a manufacturer name suffix.
> 
> (* jcl *)
> 
> On 6/3/05, Stuart Brorson <sdb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Guys --
> >=20
> > I happened to find a very interesting document calling out
> > specifications for land pattern naming.  You can get it here:
> >=20
> > http://www.pcblibraries.com/resources/7351.asp
> >=20
> > It's the last item in the list.
> >=20
> > The land pattern naming convention is apparently an IPC standard.
> > Perhaps if we adhered to this convention when creating footprint
> > libraries, then we could eliminate some of the confusion surrounding
> > the whole light vs. heavy symbol issue.  That is, we could always
> > point to the standardized names for the parts when newbies ask about
> > which footprints exist.
> >=20
> > BTW:  This web site has a number of interesting footprints for
> > download.  They are distributed in a strange compressed format.  If
> > you download the viewer and look at the footprint files with it, you
> > will see the footprint info is somewhat comprehensible ASCII
> > cleartext.  Since the footprints claim to be IPC conformant, maybe a
> > Perl script coule be used to convert them to gPCB format?
> >=20
> > Of course, John Luciani's massive collection of footprints already
> > sets the standard for gPCB, so maybe we don't need these other
> > footprints at all!
> >=20
> > Stuart
> >
>