Altium REJECTS takeover bid from Autodesk

[PlainName]

just gate off certain features in lower-tier offerings

Perhaps they've seen what we do with scopes that have that kind of tier gating.

[rsjsouza]

just gate off certain features in lower-tier offerings

Perhaps they've seen what we do with scopes that have that kind of tier gating.

Exactly. This always happened with software.

It doesn't mean they will be able to curb piracy in any way, but they are free to try.

[asmi]

Perhaps they've seen what we do with scopes that have that kind of tier gating.

Well if they do it as a business, then what stops them from just pirating the whole thing right now? Legally there is no difference between hacking you license and just faking it entirely.

But I've never heard of any business which uses hacked scopes.

[Gerhard_dk4xp]

I have hacked my Agilent 54846B. It did run Linux with Openoffice.
OK, running is not the right word. It crawled.

Gerhard

[Uky]

The Allegro (OrCAD) PCB Editor can be executed under both Windows and Linux.
(Separate downloads though) The original Cadence Schematic tool is Concept HDL
which also can be executed under Linux.

The Schematic Editor, old OrCAD "Capture" runs under Windows only.

Cadence released a new schematic tool a few years ago "System Capture".

Looks nice but asking for their strategy, if they intend to replace the old
OrCAD capture and Concept HDL tool with the new one has remained unanswered.
Recently, Cadence added a library converter from .OLB so I guess that
something is in the making.

Cadence also advertised a new product "something" but if it is a new
version 17.4+ (?) or a rebundle of a lot of options I cannot say.

[tooki]

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.

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need. They’re perfectly adequate for everyday use in many cases, just not true pro use.

This isn’t to say that open source desktop apps can’t be best-in-class, but IMHO they rarely are, not in functionality, and most certainly not in usability. Quite different from the server stuff, where open source has managed to produce truly outstanding software, just to list one example.

[coppice]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need. They’re perfectly adequate for everyday use in many cases, just not true pro use.

This isn’t to say that open source desktop apps can’t be best-in-class, but IMHO they rarely are, not in functionality, and most certainly not in usability. Quite different from the server stuff, where open source has managed to produce truly outstanding software, just to list one example.

LibreOffice is just as good as MS Office. The problem is they both suck, and need huge amounts of work to make them truly fit for purpose.

[rsjsouza]

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.

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need. They’re perfectly adequate for everyday use in many cases, just not true pro use.

This isn’t to say that open source desktop apps can’t be best-in-class, but IMHO they rarely are, not in functionality, and most certainly not in usability. Quite different from the server stuff, where open source has managed to produce truly outstanding software, just to list one example.

Although I use Gimp quite extensively for personal purposes and did a lot of work with Inkscape in a professional environment, I agree with you. Gimp's interface is much more aligned with a professional package and easier to use, but Inkscape (as well as Blender, another one that I used extensively in the past) is quite dense. Obviously that reflects the price you pay for it.

Libreoffice is quite alright and has become quite popular to have an ecosystem on itself. MSOffice, which I use extensively at work (2019 version), has a completely different interface (the ribbon stuff) and is polished in some places, but Powerpoint can still ruin your day if you get a presentation from other user (fonts, spacing, page sizes, etc can get messy). 

Kicad has some annoyances, has an interface quite different than a commercial package but the massive improvement over just a few years gives me a lot of confidence it will be capable of dealing with more and more complex designs.

[tooki]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need. They’re perfectly adequate for everyday use in many cases, just not true pro use.

This isn’t to say that open source desktop apps can’t be best-in-class, but IMHO they rarely are, not in functionality, and most certainly not in usability. Quite different from the server stuff, where open source has managed to produce truly outstanding software, just to list one example.

LibreOffice is just as good as MS Office. The problem is they both suck, and need huge amounts of work to make them truly fit for purpose.

No, it really isn’t. Literally my point: people claim it’s the same without understanding that it is not. Both are good enough for basic needs, but LibreOffice lacks a ton of advanced features used professionally, especially in business workflows. It supports automation in ways LibreOffice can’t dream of, and even where LibreOffice “does” support it, it’s not done with the consistency and reliability of MS Office. (An API is useless if it breaks with every other update…)

Remember this: just because it’s good enough for you doesn’t mean it’s good enough for everyone.

[coppice]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need. They’re perfectly adequate for everyday use in many cases, just not true pro use.

This isn’t to say that open source desktop apps can’t be best-in-class, but IMHO they rarely are, not in functionality, and most certainly not in usability. Quite different from the server stuff, where open source has managed to produce truly outstanding software, just to list one example.

LibreOffice is just as good as MS Office. The problem is they both suck, and need huge amounts of work to make them truly fit for purpose.

No, it really isn’t. Literally my point: people claim it’s the same without understanding that it is not. Both are good enough for basic needs, but LibreOffice lacks a ton of advanced features used professionally, especially in business workflows. It supports automation in ways LibreOffice can’t dream of, and even where LibreOffice “does” support it, it’s not done with the consistency and reliability of MS Office. (An API is useless if it breaks with every other update…)

Remember this: just because it’s good enough for you doesn’t mean it’s good enough for everyone.

MS Office is utter garbage, not fit for purpose. Its not good enough for anything more than trivial uses. Word especially is like a curse on humanity. That's why most serious document producers don't use it. It would be hard for an alternative to be genuinely worse.

[Nominal Animal]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need.

Mighty strong generalizations there, tooki.  Perhaps you might reconsider exactly what you claim about others there?

I must say, I take serious umbrage at your claim that people like I have "no clue" – your emphasis – what professional use of such programs is.

I designed the first set of collectors cards for the Finnish Defence Forces in 1997, using Photoshop and Freehand.  At the time, I was the webmaster there.  Later, when running a company, I did some full stack web development stuff, and preferred Photoshop; and occasionally optimized artwork for use in official mailings etc, for which I typically used Adobe Illustrator.

I do not consider myself a graphic artist; I don't have the visual style needed for that stuff.  I can do cards and icons, which don't need that much "artistry", and things that really interest me.  I've had a couple of my oil pastels on display, but that's it; I could never do commissions or such.  So, not an artist.  I can definitely do the technical job, down to color separation, masks, and even custom rasterization if I need to.  I've even taught a basic course on image processing (using Photoshop and Illustrator), although that was two decades ago.  Most of my Photoshop work was taking proper artwork from a graphics artist, and optimize them for the task at hand (web, letterhead/watermarks, etc.).

All in all, I have a few years of professional Photoshop and Freehand/Illustrator use.  I'm not much of an artist, only technically proficient.

Nowadays, I use GIMP and Inkscape.  I can do everything I did in Illustrator and Photoshop, in GIMP and Inkscape, although the workflow is a bit different.  For color separation and such, you do need additional (open source, possibly customized) tools.

Yes, the free tools lack spit and polish, and don't have the support and documentation behind them that Adobe can provide.  Many common tasks are much more efficient with Photoshop and Illustrator, so anyone using them for their everyday workflow, definitely should consider using them.  But if you only have GIMP and Inkscape, you can still achieve the exact same end results.

(Now, I really do have a bit of an esoteric career background... so, if you suspect I'm embellishing the details, do contact me via PM or email, and I can provide you with sufficient information for you to verify all of the above.)

[olkipukki]

Word especially is like a curse on humanity. That's why most serious document producers don't use it.

What they are using?

[johnboxall]

Word especially is like a curse on humanity. That's why most serious document producers don't use it. It would be hard for an alternative to be genuinely worse.

So what should we be using?

[T3sl4co1l]

I can't speak for coppice, but I know a lot of professionals use Illustrator or the like.

Which, instead of Microsoft you have Adobe.  Not much of an improvement in terms of corporate scope.

A lot of publishers are perfectly happy working with your Word documents.

Some use \$\LaTeX\$, but as far as I know it's still largely confined to academic (particularly CS, math and physics?) users, and a number of piecemeal automated systems, like, I recall reading there's a train system in Germany that generates their time sheets with scripts and LaTeX.  So, like templated HTML, but flowed nicer.  Given the trouble of using certain packages or formatting (wrapfig most notably), this is probably of limited general utility, but can be a good idea for consistent stuff like that.

Tim

[olkipukki]

I can't speak for coppice, but I know a lot of professionals use Illustrator or the like.

Do you mean FrameMaker?

Illustrator is vector graphics tool,  not sure how it can be Word's substitution... 

[coppice]

I can't speak for coppice, but I know a lot of professionals use Illustrator or the like.

Do you mean FrameMaker?

Illustrator is vector graphics tool,  not sure how it can be Word's substitution... 

FrameMaker has been heavily used for at least 3 decades. It keeps the kind of strict discipline between form and content that serious document producers are looking for. These days I see organisations using a variety of tools, like XMetal, that keep their raw documents in some kind of XML form. Interestingly, most of the people in big prganisations who aren't involved in churning out externally facing documents don't even realise that is how their organisation works.

[tooki]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need. They’re perfectly adequate for everyday use in many cases, just not true pro use.

This isn’t to say that open source desktop apps can’t be best-in-class, but IMHO they rarely are, not in functionality, and most certainly not in usability. Quite different from the server stuff, where open source has managed to produce truly outstanding software, just to list one example.

LibreOffice is just as good as MS Office. The problem is they both suck, and need huge amounts of work to make them truly fit for purpose.

No, it really isn’t. Literally my point: people claim it’s the same without understanding that it is not. Both are good enough for basic needs, but LibreOffice lacks a ton of advanced features used professionally, especially in business workflows. It supports automation in ways LibreOffice can’t dream of, and even where LibreOffice “does” support it, it’s not done with the consistency and reliability of MS Office. (An API is useless if it breaks with every other update…)

Remember this: just because it’s good enough for you doesn’t mean it’s good enough for everyone.

MS Office is utter garbage, not fit for purpose. Its not good enough for anything more than trivial uses. Word especially is like a curse on humanity. That's why most serious document producers don't use it. It would be hard for an alternative to be genuinely worse.

Except that it’s not. IMHO Word is actually the star of the whole Office package. Spending a bit of time to properly understand it (as I have) results in being very, very productive in it.

Remember that Word isn’t a desktop publishing program, and isn’t trying to be: it’s a tool for serious writing and for relatively simple continuous layouts. (That is, for single documents, not for combining documents like one does in a DTP program.) And for those things, it works very well.

Where people get into trouble is when they try to press a tool into service as something it’s not intended to be.

[tooki]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need.

Mighty strong generalizations there, tooki.  Perhaps you might reconsider exactly what you claim about others there?

I must say, I take serious umbrage at your claim that people like I have "no clue" – your emphasis – what professional use of such programs is.

I designed the first set of collectors cards for the Finnish Defence Forces in 1997, using Photoshop and Freehand.  At the time, I was the webmaster there.  Later, when running a company, I did some full stack web development stuff, and preferred Photoshop; and occasionally optimized artwork for use in official mailings etc, for which I typically used Adobe Illustrator.

I do not consider myself a graphic artist; I don't have the visual style needed for that stuff.  I can do cards and icons, which don't need that much "artistry", and things that really interest me.  I've had a couple of my oil pastels on display, but that's it; I could never do commissions or such.  So, not an artist.  I can definitely do the technical job, down to color separation, masks, and even custom rasterization if I need to.  I've even taught a basic course on image processing (using Photoshop and Illustrator), although that was two decades ago.  Most of my Photoshop work was taking proper artwork from a graphics artist, and optimize them for the task at hand (web, letterhead/watermarks, etc.).

All in all, I have a few years of professional Photoshop and Freehand/Illustrator use.  I'm not much of an artist, only technically proficient.

Nowadays, I use GIMP and Inkscape.  I can do everything I did in Illustrator and Photoshop, in GIMP and Inkscape, although the workflow is a bit different.  For color separation and such, you do need additional (open source, possibly customized) tools.

Yes, the free tools lack spit and polish, and don't have the support and documentation behind them that Adobe can provide.  Many common tasks are much more efficient with Photoshop and Illustrator, so anyone using them for their everyday workflow, definitely should consider using them.  But if you only have GIMP and Inkscape, you can still achieve the exact same end results.

(Now, I really do have a bit of an esoteric career background... so, if you suspect I'm embellishing the details, do contact me via PM or email, and I can provide you with sufficient information for you to verify all of the above.)

Oh, no, I absolutely know for a fact how professionals use those tools, which is precisely why I have strong opinions on the matter: like you, I have an eclectic background. I  worked for years doing professional tech support for Macs (most of which were graphic designers in publishing/prepress), and later worked (as a UX designer) at a web agency, working alongside graphic designers working on digital assets. And the fact is, Inkscape and Gimp don’t even come close to meeting those groups’ needs.

Desktop publishing requires robust support for CMYK color and spot colors; neither one does it. (CMYK export is not the same as native support!). Meanwhile, the web graphics people have been shifting over to specialized programs that do a better job at that than Illustrator, Photoshop, Inkscape or Gimp ever did.

Besides, where did you get the idea that I was talking about you? In my original post, I wasn’t referring to anyone in this thread. And your reply itself points out that Gimp and Inkscape can’t do what the Adobe tools do (“color separation and such”).

[tooki]

I can't speak for coppice, but I know a lot of professionals use Illustrator or the like.

Do you mean FrameMaker?

Illustrator is vector graphics tool,  not sure how it can be Word's substitution... 

FrameMaker has been heavily used for at least 3 decades. It keeps the kind of strict discipline between form and content that serious document producers are looking for. These days I see organisations using a variety of tools, like XMetal, that keep their raw documents in some kind of XML form. Interestingly, most of the people in big prganisations who aren't involved in churning out externally facing documents don't even realise that is how their organisation works.

Though I’ve never had the chance to use it, I’ve heard only good things about FrameMaker, at least for long-form documents like old-school user manuals.

As for it and other structured document systems, I think a lot of businesses would benefit by moving to them. But the fact is, even with them, you need everyday correspondence, reports, etc. And Word rules the roost there. It supports workflow features that LibreOffice just doesn’t do well. I’d love for LO to become an equal, but MS Office has a huge head start, and a much more disciplined developer behind it.

[Nominal Animal]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need.

Besides, where did you get the idea that I was talking about you? In my original post, I wasn’t referring to anyone in this thread. And your reply itself points out that Gimp and Inkscape can’t do what the Adobe tools do (“color separation and such”).

1. Not everyone doing professional work needs CMYK color separation, or other features provided by Photoshop and not GIMP.

2. GIMP is not at feature-parity with Photoshop, no.  Inkscape is not at feature-parity with Illustrator either.  (The opposite is equally true for both pairs.)  Saying they don't even begin to cover the features professionals need, is utter bullshit.

3. I often tell those interested in graphics arts on a computer that they can start with the freely available open source tools like GIMP and Inkscape: everything they can accomplish with expensive tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, they can achieve with other tools as well.  I discourage piracy, and point out that artists suffer from that themselves.

4. I've even shown a not very computer literate person how simple it is to implement ones own filtering programs using various programming languages (I used NetPBM PPM format as the example, natively supported in GIMP), explaining the basic idea of chaining separate tools to achieve desired results, and ones own scripts (including extensions in Inkscape) to do something only oneself can imagine doing.  There can be value in modifying ones tools, and although few artists decide to go that route, knowing it is possible is important.  Similarly, it is important to not get stuck on the idea that you need specific tools to achieve a specific result or quality: it is not true at all.

5. I've shown, I hope, that I very definitely have a clue what professional use of these is.

I'm sorry, tooki, but your claim sounds exactly like someone enamored of their tools, or having assimilated the worldview of people fully enamored of their tools, and cannot imagine using any other tools to achieve the same task.  I worked for years with people who had for example very strong opinions wrt. Freehand versus Illustrator, so much so as to yelling in meetings about it, so I'm familiar with the argumentation style.

I do know, however, how compelling those arguments are in the real world workplace.  Not because they're right, but because they're so loud and persistent, and based on deep emotional convictions.

[PlainName]

Can I just butt in to say my partner is in the publishing industry and the bulk of her work is with Word documents and PDFs. Word is a necessity - Libre Office isn't compatible enough - and people use it mostly because everyone else uses it. OTOH, she uses pdfXchange for PDFs because it's better than the Adobe offering and there is no compatibility issue.

Obviously, Word isn't suitable for doing the layout of the Financial Times, for instance, so a big problem with this discussion is that 'professional' seems to cover anything and everything that might involve words. Too big a field to even start generalising, but to insinuate that Word isn't or can't be used professionally is, and I quote, 'cobblers'.

[Nominal Animal]

To provide an opposite viewpoint to my own above: it is rather common to be tied to specific applications, just because the users demand those particular ones.

If I were hiring graphics artists, I would have to provide them with Photoshop, Illustrator, et. al, simply because those are the de facto standard tools for those tasks.

It has nothing to do with what tools are necessary to achieve specific results, and everything to do with what tools are so popular among workers that they become expected, the de facto standard for that job.

[Karel]

So, will autodesk do another (higher) bid for altium?

[PlainName]

Hope not!

If they bought it would it replace Eagle? Even now after they've embedded Eagle, or its functionality, in Fusion? It would be one thing to buy Altium to expand their product line, but they already have PCB design capability. So perhaps the plan would be to buy it so they can bury it and remove some competition. If so, there must be a limit to how much they can throw away just to leave a clear field. Which wouldn't be that clear with Orcad being in the same ballpark.

[tooki]

That reminds me of the people who say that LibreOffice is a complete substitute for MS Office, or that GIMP and Inkscape can replace Photoshop and Illustrator: they have no clue what professional use is, and that the open source apps don’t even begin to cover the specialized features professionals need.

Besides, where did you get the idea that I was talking about you? In my original post, I wasn’t referring to anyone in this thread. And your reply itself points out that Gimp and Inkscape can’t do what the Adobe tools do (“color separation and such”).

1. Not everyone doing professional work needs CMYK color separation, or other features provided by Photoshop and not GIMP.

2. GIMP is not at feature-parity with Photoshop, no.  Inkscape is not at feature-parity with Illustrator either.  (The opposite is equally true for both pairs.)  Saying they don't even begin to cover the features professionals need, is utter bullshit.

3. I often tell those interested in graphics arts on a computer that they can start with the freely available open source tools like GIMP and Inkscape: everything they can accomplish with expensive tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, they can achieve with other tools as well.  I discourage piracy, and point out that artists suffer from that themselves.

4. I've even shown a not very computer literate person how simple it is to implement ones own filtering programs using various programming languages (I used NetPBM PPM format as the example, natively supported in GIMP), explaining the basic idea of chaining separate tools to achieve desired results, and ones own scripts (including extensions in Inkscape) to do something only oneself can imagine doing.  There can be value in modifying ones tools, and although few artists decide to go that route, knowing it is possible is important.  Similarly, it is important to not get stuck on the idea that you need specific tools to achieve a specific result or quality: it is not true at all.

5. I've shown, I hope, that I very definitely have a clue what professional use of these is.

I'm sorry, tooki, but your claim sounds exactly like someone enamored of their tools, or having assimilated the worldview of people fully enamored of their tools, and cannot imagine using any other tools to achieve the same task.  I worked for years with people who had for example very strong opinions wrt. Freehand versus Illustrator, so much so as to yelling in meetings about it, so I'm familiar with the argumentation style.

I do know, however, how compelling those arguments are in the real world workplace.  Not because they're right, but because they're so loud and persistent, and based on deep emotional convictions.

My original statement was about people claiming the OSS tools are complete replacements. I said they’re not. You said they’re not. Why are you fighting with me? To be clear since you’re not picking it up: I said nothing about PARTIAL replacements.