Mail Archives: geda-user/2023/10/11/21:30:55
On 10/9/23 23:35, DJ Delorie wrote:
> No significant commits in years.
>
> No releases in years.
>
> Subprojects moving away, or forking.
>
> Mailing lists are oddly quiet.
>
> Risks are arising about dependencies on obsolete toolkits.
>
> Nobody seems interested in maintaining it any more.
>
> I'm contemplating pulling the plug on the 12 year old server and
> calling it a day.
>
> Anyone want to argue otherwise? ;-)
>
> (and if you do, you'll likely end up owning it ;)
I'm a long-time user and lover of geda and PCB; I've designed
hundreds of boards with it over the past 20+ years, both commercially
and for personal projects. Geda and PCB are very good programs, capable
of real production-quality results, i.e. not some hobbyist toy. And
since it's not subject to corporate whim and doesn't involve any Windows
BS, it's safe for the long term.
But, I have to admit with no small amount of shame, that I moved to
KiCad about two years ago. I've designed about 35 boards with it, and
it has been great. I feel shame because geda/PCB has been developed by
people whom I consider to be friends, and for whom I have great respect,
and honestly, I still love the software. I don't like to abandon things
(or people) that have been good to me.
I moved to KiCad due to the great tool integration, excellent
libraries, and excellent feature set. The pace of development is rapid.
KiCad was a hobbyist toy, I mean seriously it was a real pile of crap,
just a few short years ago. Now it's absolutely fantastic. CERN
throwing its money and developers behind KiCad a few years ago really
turned it around. It's a shame they didn't adopt geda/PCB instead. I
always wondered about that.
I still need to keep geda and PCB running in order to access old
designs. Sometimes a client will contact me years later and request a
variation of an existing design. There's no practical way (none that
I've found anyway) to import geda's schematics or PCB's board layouts
into KiCad, so I just hope I can keep things running.
Between work and running the museum (LSSM), both of which are
full-time jobs, I'm just too busy to take on a code maintenance project,
as much as I'd like to, and as much as I feel geda/PCB deserve my
support in that form. What I can offer, though, is permanent server
space for any and all list archives, sources, binaries, etc etc, if that
is ever needed. The network I run has been around for a very long time
(it predates both Google and Yahoo by many years) and is stable.
I do hope someone picks up the long-term maintenance of this code.
It's important.
Thank you to all who have worked on this over the years.
With respect,
-Dave McGuire
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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