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From: Kai-Martin Knaak <knaak AT iqo DOT uni-hannover DOT de>
Subject: Re: [geda-user] New experimental netlist features
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2015 00:52:25 +0200
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Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

Nicklas Karlsson wrote:

>> gEDA has already lost to KiCad.
> 
> No it is possible to make gEDA better whenever we want.

Back in 2006, when I started my journey into open source EDA land, geda 
was the undisputed favorite among all affordable alternatives. This 
applied not only for enthusiasts with specific partialities or users whose 
use cases deviated significantly from the main stream. It was true for the 
very generic use case "schematic->layout->PCB". Not only was geda the only 
suite which beat eagle hands down in usability. It also scaled reasonably 
well and even supported hierarchical design.

This pole position got lost to kicad. 

Unlike other EDA projects in 2006, geda had a lively community of 
developers. I remember notes of real-life meetings which made me envious 
to not live in the Boston area. There was a busy user mailing list and 
another for development. IRC, both were open for everyone to read and 
write. And there was a regular date on IRC where geda people met for a 
chat. By contrast, kicad looked pretty much like a one-man-show back then. 

Unfortunately, this changed gradually but continuously on the geda side. 
Climate on the user mailing list got chilly. Patches presented by users 
were ignored until they bit rot. The dev list got closed for mere users. 
First it was read-only. Then, read was also off-limits for non-devs. For a 
time, the user mailing list had the moderated flag in place. Meaning, 
mails by users to the user mailing list needed the approval of a dev to be 
actually delivered. 

All of this lead to frustration and did not help to motivate contribute. 
Long term developers phased out of the project. Hardly any user ramped up 
their engagement and become a dev themselves. In a sense, the project had 
entered a downward spiral. 

At the same time the kicad project managed to go the other way: It had an 
expanding developer group. Its user base grew by the day, progress 
accelerated. Features that had seemed way behind the horizon got 
implemented. This in turn pulled in more users and even an organization 
like the CERN. So yes, geda has currently lost on all but very 
specifically defined metrics to kicad.

But today is not the end of time. Open source history is speckled with 
examples of two or more successful projects for the same task. Think 
geda/KDE, libreoffice/latex, git/svn,  mediawiki/dokuwiki, python/php/perl  
...  

I am happy to see a significant change of climate transpired from the 
current participants on this mailing list. I'd say this includes devs and 
users. Discussions this summer have been way more productive than any time 
I remember. It is not just talk. The gschem recently saw the first UI  
improvements in years (thank Erich!). Long lingering patches on launchpad 
get applied (thank you, Traumflug!). There is a move toward python (thank 
you Roland!). New developers spread their wings (thank you DJ!).

All of these do not make geda suddenly be better by orders of magnitude. 
But they represent change for a better future.  

---<)kaimartin(>---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak                                  tel: +49-511-762-2895
Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik      fax: +49-511-762-2211	
Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover           http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de
GPG key:    http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=Knaak+kmk&op=get