Re: gEDA-user: fritzing

[al davis <ad252@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dave McGuire wrote:
> >    And, that said, there's nothing preventing the vendor of
> > Eagle   (into whom your new project will presumably be
> > locked) from writing gEDA file format I/O into their
> > software to facilitate interoperability...but you know as
> > well as I do that interoperability is the last thing
> > proprietary software vendors want.

On Sunday 10 May 2009, Joerg wrote:
> Actually you'd be surprised. They have said that they'd
> embrace EDA cooperation in this respect but that this ain't
> the case with many other vendors.

Actually, most of them want real standards, but refuse to accept 
the format of a competitor as a standard.

Real standards are decided by committees, and eventually 
approved by an organization like JEDEC, IEEE, ISO, or something 
like that.  Then, compliance to a standard is something that can 
be proven and advertised.

When there is no real standard, it is the responsibility of the 
underdog to make it compatible.

When there is a real standard that is close to meeting the 
needs, often they will adopt it and make extensions.  Ideally, 
the extensions would become part of the standard, but too often 
competitors will not accept that.  It gets debated by the 
committee, and is considered to be a real prize for *your* 
format to be adopted by the committee.

What gEDA and Kicad both need to do is look for an externally 
defined standard, use it, then invite the others to participate 
in making the needed extensions and macros an official standard.  
I made a proposal a long time ago, but need some help in coding, 
because I don't have time to do it all.



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