It's nice to hear from you again. The answer to your question is no, the freeware version wouldn't allow you to modify the six layer board so there's no need to answer the second question. However, I've been thinking a lot about this long term support situation, it's been on my mind since this all started. I've never made anything that has required a guaranteed 10-15(or whatever time frame you want to put) year availability, but I know some of you do. Here's my question to you guys, and it's a real question, not trying to be polemic but I'm trying to understand the situation.
Let's say you have a customer and they enter into a contract with you where they will purchase X amount of product for the next 15 years, so you must now guarantee support for the product for that time frame. What happens if for whatever reason you have to close up shop 8 years into the contract? I know there are a lot of extenuating factors and clauses that can be in these sorts of things but what would be the general approach to handling that situation?
I have never found a pleasing way to answer the concern "What happens if Autodesk disappears in X time? Under this model I can't continue to use EAGLE" though I'm still trying to find an answer. It seems to me that there is a direct parallel between the hypothetical situation above and when EAGLE users tell us that they don't want to be hosed if Autodesk closes shop. What's the difference? Why do your customers feel OK entering into these contracts with that same possibility looming, but some EAGLE users don't feel comfortable with the long term prospect of Autodesk. I'm having trouble seeing the difference between both scenarios.
If anyone can enlighten me I would really appreciate it.
Thanks for the attention guys.
Hi Jorge,
Sorry for a delayed reply here as I've been away (back to the middle of nowhere for a while).
Really your question comes down to a question of "scale" ...
Allow me to explain ...
For the first part ... lets look into a support agreement that gets terminated .. for say lack of anything else ... "act of god" (the insurance companies just *love* that clause).
If we're shutting shop due to nuclear war and the entire planet becomes a waste land .. well ... I'm pretty sure most people will have more pressing matters to hand than concerning themselves with one of my controllers...
For less dramatic issues though (say I drop dead) ... while I can't tell you what others do, but I can tell you what *I* now do.
In short for the stuff that I work on, we use "Source in Escrow". This wasn't my idea but something that was suggested to me by another contractor working in the same area and that seems to tick most of the boxes.
In short, the way it works is that finalised design files, a copy of the software and my *OWN* license key for that is kept with a legal firm. In the event that I (and my company) drops dead, any of my clients can request the source documentation and files for anything that I have done for them. The legal firm holds *all* schematics, board layout files, source files, build environments, etc. So in other words ... if you need it to maintain it in 10+ years time ... it's there (even if I'm not). All my existing client know who to contact ... it's part of my deal with them.
It isn't cheap thing to set up but some of the stuff that I work on basically requires that you provide "something" like this. Now while this doesn't handle the contingency that the legal firm also closes up shop the same time I do but the likelihood of both occurring at the same time is pretty small and most seem to accept that.
As general good practise though, my clients always get a copy of the original schematics (in printed form) so they aren't completely sh*t out of luck in the event that everything were to turn south if the legal firm were also to close up shop.
In general principle, my clients get most source code (for example ... most stuff I typically work on uses discreet microprocessors so they get ROMs on the boards and well as a couple spare). PLD files (PALASM, Verilog, etc) are a bit different as there are issues with keeping a remote build "active" over time which is problematic (oddly enough... I only replied to a message on this subject a day or two ago -
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/how-do-you-preserve-the-idetoolchain-over-many-years/msg1371498/#msg1371498) but at least the original Verilog source is there along with most other documentation and notes associated with it.
I have started keeping a development VM in escrow as well which works for *some* things ... just not all (because of the barstardry of their time-locked license files). JED and other binary files used to program PLDs are however kept so if a bitstream needs to be re-written to a replacement chip as-is, then that is possible.
Ultimately, the *best* solution for my customers would be to open-source the lot and have it mirrored on something like gitHub or sourceforge but I do have some stuff that I use which I don't own the copyrights on so I can't release it. This *seems* to be the best way around that, but I'm truly open for ideas or better suggestions....
It is important to note that this "Source in Escrow" does *NOT* work for anything that is "cloud" or hosted... so that means *NO* hosted products as they can't be neatly packaged up into a box and handed over to a legal firm for opening at a later date. That is why I am now 100% against all cloud based services for EDA that are used to master a product.
I say this because only recently I've had to deal with stupidity where another contractor actually did drop dead and his stuff was AWS hosted up until the point he no longer paid the bills so AWS creamed it and it is now gone forever - and that means no schematics, design files, source files ... nothing .... gone ... whoosh ...
The best I had to work with was an outdated schematic printout ... so ... yeah ... not a real pleasing way to pick up the pieces. I have not even begun to work out how in the hell I will reverse engineer the CPLD .. though I do have the original JED file as it was on his laptop when he was programming the CPLDs. If I didn't have that, I would have been 100% screwed (as apposed to being only 90% screwed as I am right now).
/BGM