Author Topic: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk  (Read 53241 times)

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Offline nctnico

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #50 on: June 12, 2021, 08:41:44 pm »
I can't imagine why anyone buys Eagle. We used to find it extremely useful for designing evaluation and other similar small boards, with Eagle as a free package. You can pass your CAD files around, and anyone can immediatly work with them without needing to buy anything. However, as soon as it costs even $1 it has lost that benefit, and it has little to offer as a commercial package.

Eagle had the traction it did because the maker scene started using it. Adafruit, Sparkfun et.al because there was that free version that allowed you to do small boards which is what the entire maker arduino scene was all about.
Harly anyone in industry used it for serious high end work.
The latter goes for Altium as well. Every SoC design example which has some high speed interfaces and / or memory on it is made using Cadence Allegro. My guess is that KiCad is starting to eat into Altium's revenues as well and Altium can't climb up the ladder fast enough. If Autodesk transforms Altium into a subscribtion only model then it is probably the last nail in the coffin. The only thing currently missing from KiCad is a real, database driven part management system but that is on the development roadmap for the next version. Once that is there, there is very little reason to choose Altium.
I've seen quite a few big organisations dump Allegro in the last few years, and use Altium across their entire organisation. I'm not sure of the reasons, but Altium is being used for all kinds of exotic designs.
That is not the point. The question is: what is the added value of Altium when (not if) KiCad offers similar functionality? You can get professional support for KiCad if you want so that is not an issue. Which in turn raises the question on how sensible it is for Autodesk to acquire Altium. Allegro is a step up from Altium so in turn not likely to be threatened by KiCad however many companies won't need stuff like impedance and crosstalk simulations. The latter is unlikely to ever be implemented in KiCad because it is not trivial to do.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2021, 08:57:17 pm by nctnico »
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #51 on: June 13, 2021, 04:00:32 am »
That is not the point. The question is: what is the added value of Altium when (not if) KiCad offers similar functionality?

KiCad might appear to offer similar functionaly to Altium if all you ever do is fairly basic to mid level boards. But if you do very complex mid to higher end stuff, Altium is still streets ahead.
 

Offline bson

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #52 on: June 13, 2021, 10:39:46 pm »
That is not the point. The question is: what is the added value of Altium when (not if) KiCad offers similar functionality?

KiCad might appear to offer similar functionaly to Altium if all you ever do is fairly basic to mid level boards. But if you do very complex mid to higher end stuff, Altium is still streets ahead.
But the vast majority of PCB design is extremely mundane, intentionally eschewing complexity and moving as much of that as possible to firmware.  If 90% of Altium licensees don't see a benefit, what will this do to Altium's revenue?  And this is only going to go in one direction, 90% may be 92% next year.  95% the year after that.  Eventually there isn't enough for Altium to sustain life.  The ten customers left who need some specific feature will just have to go find something else.

 

Offline james_s

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #53 on: June 13, 2021, 11:02:26 pm »
I'm a big fan of KiCad but I think Altium has a bigger lead than you give them credit for. Nobody is going to be designing mobile phones, tablets, laptop motherboards or other high complexity stuff in KiCad any time soon. A large amount of PCB design is not high end, but if you're a company that does 90% simple stuff and 10% stuff that requires a product like Altium, you're probably going to use Altium for everything. This may eventually change but it's going to be a while.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #54 on: June 14, 2021, 02:10:59 am »
I'm a big fan of KiCad but I think Altium has a bigger lead than you give them credit for. Nobody is going to be designing mobile phones, tablets, laptop motherboards or other high complexity stuff in KiCad any time soon. A large amount of PCB design is not high end, but if you're a company that does 90% simple stuff and 10% stuff that requires a product like Altium, you're probably going to use Altium for everything. This may eventually change but it's going to be a while.
The last time I tried KICAD was a couple of years ago, and it crashed so much I didn't spend much time with it. A little Googling today shows a lot of people highly praising KICAD, but also a number of seasoned people complaining the latest version (5.1) still crashes too much for serious use.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #55 on: June 14, 2021, 04:45:58 am »
The last time I tried KICAD was a couple of years ago, and it crashed so much I didn't spend much time with it. A little Googling today shows a lot of people highly praising KICAD, but also a number of seasoned people complaining the latest version (5.1) still crashes too much for serious use.

I've been using KiCad pretty heavily for at least 10 years, I can't recall ever having it crash, not even once. I often have 2 or 3 back burner designs I'm working on sitting open in the background for months even. I wonder what people are doing that's causing it to crash? Maybe the Linux version has issues? I've mostly run it on Windows. It has some warts, but stability is not one of them, at least not in my experience.
 

Offline apurvdate

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #56 on: June 14, 2021, 04:52:10 am »
I've seen quite a few big organisations dump Allegro in the last few years, and use Altium across their entire organisation. I'm not sure of the reasons, but Altium is being used for all kinds of exotic designs.

Some Cadence partners are providing the orcad standard license at very aggressive (& attractive) cost throughout last year. Many small organizations who do not work in the fancy stuff are picking up that. They see it as easier path to future scale-up. Even small freelancers are thinking of getting it. A perpetual dongle based license instead of all the cloud & online stuff is great ! This is just another thing eating into altium's share.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #57 on: June 14, 2021, 05:57:17 am »
Nobody is going to be designing mobile phones, tablets, laptop motherboards or other high complexity stuff in KiCad any time soon.

Neither in altium.
 

Offline KE5FX

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #58 on: June 14, 2021, 06:56:27 am »
I'm a big fan of KiCad but I think Altium has a bigger lead than you give them credit for. Nobody is going to be designing mobile phones, tablets, laptop motherboards or other high complexity stuff in KiCad any time soon. A large amount of PCB design is not high end, but if you're a company that does 90% simple stuff and 10% stuff that requires a product like Altium, you're probably going to use Altium for everything. This may eventually change but it's going to be a while.

Meanwhile...
 

Offline daqq

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #59 on: June 14, 2021, 10:27:17 am »
FFS not another one down the Autodesk drain. Please, anyone, buy them lest they fall under Autodesk turd stained fingers and they give it the Eagle treatment.
Believe it or not, pointy haired people do exist!
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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #60 on: June 14, 2021, 11:21:57 am »
I've had better luck with KICAD stability than Altium.
Same here. Not only intrinsic code bugs/failures, but Altium has many more points of failure with network connection for the Vault, licensing, etc. when compared to Kicad.

I recall when our software had paid licensing - the amount of questions and issues from both local and network licenses (the annoying FlexLM software) was immense.
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Offline coppice

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #61 on: June 14, 2021, 01:12:41 pm »
I've had better luck with KICAD stability than Altium.
Same here. Not only intrinsic code bugs/failures, but Altium has many more points of failure with network connection for the Vault, licensing, etc. when compared to Kicad.

I recall when our software had paid licensing - the amount of questions and issues from both local and network licenses (the annoying FlexLM software) was immense.
The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling. One of the biggest benefits of free software for people on the move in big multi-nationals is being able to run software whenever you like. Things like Matlab are the worst. Their geolocked licences mean your company can have lots of idle licences in Europe, and American, and India, and Japan, while you are in China and can't use it. When I was friends with people in an EDA support team some years ago, a huge amount of their work was sorting out licence issues.
 

Offline olkipukki

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #62 on: June 14, 2021, 01:50:48 pm »

The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling.
On Demand license + Roaming option = AD Pain Free Usage  ^-^
 
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Offline Karel

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #63 on: June 14, 2021, 02:36:12 pm »

The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling.
On Demand license + Roaming option = AD Pain Free Usage  ^-^

Do I understand correctly that the standard license artificially limits the usage (geolocking) and for an extra payment they remove this limitation?

Reminds me to DSO's with license codes that enables certain  options...
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #64 on: June 14, 2021, 03:29:09 pm »
I've had better luck with KICAD stability than Altium.
Same here. Not only intrinsic code bugs/failures, but Altium has many more points of failure with network connection for the Vault, licensing, etc. when compared to Kicad.

I recall when our software had paid licensing - the amount of questions and issues from both local and network licenses (the annoying FlexLM software) was immense.
The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling. One of the biggest benefits of free software for people on the move in big multi-nationals is being able to run software whenever you like. Things like Matlab are the worst. Their geolocked licences mean your company can have lots of idle licences in Europe, and American, and India, and Japan, while you are in China and can't use it. When I was friends with people in an EDA support team some years ago, a huge amount of their work was sorting out licence issues.
We never did enable FlexLM geolocation and we used to have a grace period of (I think) 30 days before requiring re-connecting. Despite this, the whole scheme can still be prone to failure.

On the other hand, I understand why such things exist and how the software business is a very hard one. Just a handful of companies actually make the big bucks, but the vast majority vanishes quite quickly or become stale. 
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Offline coppice

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #65 on: June 14, 2021, 04:08:11 pm »

The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling.
On Demand license + Roaming option = AD Pain Free Usage  ^-^
That reduces the pain. However, there's always the trip you take not expecting to need a licence, and then someone asks you to look at something as you travel. If everyone holds a licence every time they travel they will quickly use up all the licences in most companies.
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #66 on: June 14, 2021, 05:37:29 pm »
Where did you hear that?
Protel for DOS was written from scratch by Nick Martin in Borland Pascal, and then moved to Delphi once they moved to Windows. It never used Fortran.


Yep, I can't see why there would be any Fortran in that given the history and platform.

Do you know if AD is still all written in Delphi?
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #67 on: June 14, 2021, 05:55:37 pm »

The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling.
On Demand license + Roaming option = AD Pain Free Usage  ^-^

Do I understand correctly that the standard license artificially limits the usage (geolocking) and for an extra payment they remove this limitation?

Reminds me to DSO's with license codes that enables certain  options...

in both cases it means those who need those options get to pay for them, those who don't, don't

almost all commercial software is "artificially limited", anyone can download the install files but it won't run without a license


 

 

Offline Karel

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #68 on: June 14, 2021, 07:27:38 pm »

The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling.
On Demand license + Roaming option = AD Pain Free Usage  ^-^

Do I understand correctly that the standard license artificially limits the usage (geolocking) and for an extra payment they remove this limitation?

Reminds me to DSO's with license codes that enables certain  options...

in both cases it means those who need those options get to pay for them, those who don't, don't

No, it means that altium has to pay programmers to write more code (for geolocking) for customers who pay less.
It's the world upside-down.
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #69 on: June 14, 2021, 09:13:32 pm »

The licencing with Altium can be a real pain when you are travelling.
On Demand license + Roaming option = AD Pain Free Usage  ^-^

Do I understand correctly that the standard license artificially limits the usage (geolocking) and for an extra payment they remove this limitation?

Reminds me to DSO's with license codes that enables certain  options...

in both cases it means those who need those options get to pay for them, those who don't, don't

No, it means that altium has to pay programmers to write more code (for geolocking) for customers who pay less.
It's the world upside-down.

it means those that only need it in one location gets it cheaper than those that need multiple locations

 

Offline coppice

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #70 on: June 14, 2021, 09:22:26 pm »
it means those that only need it in one location gets it cheaper than those that need multiple locations
I'm only ever in one location when I'm using a software package.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #71 on: June 14, 2021, 09:25:38 pm »
Reminds me to DSO's with license codes that enables certain  options...

I like that if it means I can get the scope cheaper by skipping on optional features that I don't need.

I like it even better if I can hack it to enable those features and feel like I got something for nothing even if those features are useless to me, without costing the company anything more to provide it.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #72 on: June 14, 2021, 09:49:02 pm »
it means those that only need it in one location gets it cheaper than those that need multiple locations
I'm only ever in one location when I'm using a software package.
But you'll still need to replace your PC at one point. I bought a USB dongle with the CAD package (not Altium) I'm using. In the end you don't know how long Altium's servers will be kept up & running to support old licenses which are not under a maintenance contract. Especially when taken over by a company that pushes the subscription model agressively. OTOH you can likely find a cracked version so at least you can keep using the software you paid for.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2021, 09:50:37 pm by nctnico »
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Offline langwadt

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #73 on: June 15, 2021, 12:02:40 am »
it means those that only need it in one location gets it cheaper than those that need multiple locations
I'm only ever in one location when I'm using a software package.

so you pay less than those who need multiple locations
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk
« Reply #74 on: June 15, 2021, 12:21:33 am »
Do you know if AD is still all written in Delphi?

Certainly not all of it. I've heard a few years back that they had changed the majority over to C++ or whatever it is.
Given that is was supposed to be 15 million lines of Delphi code in 2014, I'm sure there is still some left:
https://blogs.embarcadero.com/altium-designer-15-000-000-codelines/

As of 2018 it was still using a mix of Delphi, C++ and C# accoridng to the SDK:
https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-dxp-developer/an-overview-of-the-altium-sdk

I wonder if they still use Morfik for web services?  :-DD
Given that the Altium CEO wrote Morfik though...
« Last Edit: June 15, 2021, 12:24:43 am by EEVblog »
 


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