<div dir="ltr">Some good dicussion from an old thread~<br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><span><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><font size="2"><font color="#666666">~~~<br><a href="http://narwhaledu.org" target="_blank">narwhaledu.org</a>, educational <a href="http://gfycat.com/ExcitableLeanAkitainu" target="_blank">robots</a> [[<(._.)>]] </font></font><a href="http://www.orangenarwhals.com" style="font-size:12.8000001907349px" target="_blank">my personal blog</a><span style="color:rgb(102,102,102);font-size:12.8000001907349px">, orangenarwhals</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">timofonic timofonic</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:timofonic@gmail.com">timofonic@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 8:44 PM<br>Subject: [Discuss] FOSDEM 2016 EDA devroom Call for Participation<br>To: The Open Source Hardware Association Discussion List <<a href="mailto:discuss@lists.oshwa.org">discuss@lists.oshwa.org</a>><br><br><br><div>Hello.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>I'm just a lurker. I just wish the EDAcore idea gets reconsidered and taken more seriously.</div><div><br></div><div>I think usability is extremely underrated in FOSS, specially in the technical tools. </div><div>Both gEDA and KiCad are very cumbersome to use and has too many quirks.</div><div>* What about collaborating with entities such as OpenUsability.org and start pilot survey programs to get feedback from users? I could do one in my vocational training school if someone assist me on it and teachers.</div><div>* Usability doesn't mean to make software dumber, but more comfortable to use and customize to users needs. It requires to understand the psychology of users, different workflows and skills/experience of users.</div><div>* Please don't follow certain toxic approaches chosen by many popular FOSS and proprietary software, making software less featured and even frustrating in certain cases.</div><div><br></div><div>I think it's just not enough to have open formats, but to provide interoperability between FOSS and many proprietary EDA tools. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>- I think the final goal would be something like OpenDocument, even better if itbecomes part of OASIS. It would require an agreement between many FOSS and some smaller proprietary EDA developers, I'm sure big ones aren't interested in breaking this way of vendor lock-in.</div><div><br></div><div>- What about sharing a common format and repoaitory for symbols, footprints and simulation models? What about the issue v of copyright in SPICE models from component manufacturers?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>For the good of FOSS and OSHW communities, there must be an agreement to join in common goals instead differences. </div><div>- All egos must be taken apart and share as much source code as possible to save reaources.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Real Time/Online Collaboration: This is underrated in OSHW, but it's quite used in proprietary tools and big companies with software such as Altium.</div><div>- I think there's also a need to make GitHub-like services provide better capabilities for OSHW by extending already available protocols.</div><div>* Git extensions for RTCE?</div><div>* Visual diffs?</div><div>* Use of WebRTC/ORTC (aka WebRTC 1.1)? Wave protocol?</div><div><br></div><div>- Software development has a better culture and availability of tools for collaboration and organization:</div><div>* Source Code Management tools exist since longer time. </div><div>* There's lots of tools in FOSS from CVS to Git and many many proprietary ones.</div><div>* There's tons of bugtrackers and ways to debug software easily by users.</div><div>* There's better documentation.</div><div>* Cowboy programming us discouraged and a failure for a project, but cowboy electronics is the usual way. There isn't a good culture for collaboration and helping, but a competitive and isolating one.</div><div><br></div><div>- How to protectively promote and make it as easy as possible in hardware?</div><div><br></div><div>- This could be quite useful in:</div><div>* Big OSHW projects: Why just design simple stuff? Why not a complete computer device, big industrial hardware, a professional grade oscilloscope or whatever? </div><div><br></div><div>* Education: With some modes (read-only, blocked app, logging user usage...) this could be very useful for teaching and training.</div><div><br></div><div>- Please take into account i18n: </div><div>* I know English is the pidgin language of these days, but some very skilled professionals still refuse to it. </div><div>* Many languages like ones from Asia are very different from English and have serious issues learning it in an acceptable level at least.</div><div>* You are from Spain like me, so you know even my inaccurate English is a lot better than the average one, even from higher education.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Organization and coordination of FOSS projects: </div><div><br></div><div>- Many FOSS projects lack a proper organization and coordination: </div><div>* They need good project managers with strong leadership and open minded but practical thinking. Stubbornness is discouraged and sometimes a core team is needed to avoid chaos. Meritocracy can level up or down the ranges and responsabilitiea of contributors in the organization.</div><div>* This makes projects to eventually stagnate and die, it's very sad this happens so commonly on many really interesting projects.</div><div><br></div><div>Kind regards.</div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>On Thursday, October 29, 2015, Javier Serrano <<a href="mailto:Javier.Serrano@cern.ch" target="_blank">Javier.Serrano@cern.ch</a>> wrote:</div><div><br></div><div>Dear all,</div><div><br></div><div>This year we are again organizing a FOSS Electronics Design Automation</div><div>(EDA) devroom at FOSDEM:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.ohwr.org/projects/ohr-meta/wiki/FOSDEM2016" target="_blank">http://www.ohwr.org/projects/ohr-meta/wiki/FOSDEM2016</a></div><div><br></div><div>It is clear that electronics designs are best shared using file formats</div><div>which can be viewed and modified using free-as-in-freedom tools. There</div><div>has been quite a lot of progress feature-wise and quality-wise in many</div><div>of these tools in recent years. This event is a great opportunity to</div><div>catch up with the latest developments and discuss with developers and</div><div>users of these tools.</div><div><br></div><div>Please consider submitting a request for a talk or just attending, and</div><div>feel free to pass this on to anybody you think could be interested.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks!</div><div><br></div><div>Javier</div><div>_______________________________________________</div><div>discuss mailing list</div><div><a href="mailto:discuss@lists.oshwa.org" target="_blank">discuss@lists.oshwa.org</a></div><div><a href="http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss" target="_blank">http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss</a></div><div><br></div>
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