General > General Technical Chat
Is Altium free anywhere?
hans:
--- Quote from: floobydust on May 15, 2023, 04:02:03 am ---
Massive bungling of their fucking libraries over the years, everyone has to make their own footprints from scratch over and over and over again towards trusted libraries.
I think Kicad I have not tried but there seem to be libraries that are community-checked for errors and not part of some leach librarian company that can have component errors and fat bloated 3D models.
Kicad needs an Altium importer and that would likely crater the dinosaur?
--- End quote ---
Maybe I'm biased, or I'm a dinosaur as well.. But libraries = Always make your own. I imported a Kicad design from 2021 the other day. Used the TPS63000 DC/DC chip from library. The libraries schematic symbol changed. It got migrated into my schematic and so RIP that design.
IMO using externeral dependencies is always a shortcut. I made that design as a tryout for KiCad, and from time to time I open the design files since I need to fix some hardware issue on a batch of boards I've had assembled at JLC. Its very offputting that for every new Kicad version I install, it is nagging me with increasingly more popups on things to migrat from their library on the schematic or PCB. IMO this is a pure no-go for any CAD software that needs to support archivable designs.
Importers are always a pain IMO. It's just not the same as native, as every tool used slightly different math to put their right angle tracks onto grid, used different layers or annotations for documentation, etc.
tooki:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on May 14, 2023, 09:50:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on May 14, 2023, 04:30:21 pm ---Basically, "KiCad is just as good as Altium" is a typical open-source software fanboy claim. It's just as untrue as the claims that "LibreOffice is just as good as Microsoft Office"
--- End quote ---
I don't know about Altium vs KiCAD, but I have to disagree with you about LibreOffice vs MS Office. I find MS Office virtually unusable. It's appalling. LibreOffice is much better. I've taken work home, just so I can use LibreOffice, because MS Office is too slow and clunky. It's not a matter of taking time to get used to it. I've used plenty of other GUIs in my time, not just on Windows, but other platforms and have definitely found MS Office to be one of the worst.
--- End quote ---
Forget about the user interface for a moment. (Especially since that is, to an extent, a matter of taste and familiarity.)
The issue is that LibreOffice's feature set isn't nearly as broad. It's more than enough for basic tasks, but it's simply missing many advanced things. So when people say it's "just as good", they're people who have yet to run into the absence of a feature. They don't consider that the other features are used by other people, and aren't just useless fluff.
(Also, they're much less disciplined about API stability. I worked at a software company whose product integrates with word processors. LibreOffice Writer was a constant problem, because the scripting API would often break with updates. Word's scripting and add-on APIs just worked. To this day they haven't even bothered trying to make an add-on for Writer.)
It's the same with the other examples I gave: the feature sets simply are not there. They may be adequate for casual users. (Including people who occasionally use them for professional work.) But they aren't sufficiently feature-rich for serious professional use. You need features that simply aren't there. You may be able to achieve the same end result, but it'll take more work in the less-capable program, so with time being money, professionals will pay for the more efficient tool. And that's precisely why professionals aren't going to switch to KiCad in droves anytime soon.
tatel:
--- Quote from: tooki on May 14, 2023, 04:30:21 pm ---
Basically, "KiCad is just as good as Altium" is a typical open-source software fanboy claim. It's just as untrue as the claims that "LibreOffice is just as good as Microsoft Office" or "GIMP is just as good as Photoshop". In every case, the open-source program can do all of the basics (and then some), but simply cannot compete with the feature sets that those established commercial programs built up over the course of decades.
While I have every reason to believe that open-source server software (servers, databases, etc.) can do everything their commercial counterparts can, that simply isn't the case for desktop software. The fact that no open source desktop app has ever managed to dethrone its commercial counterparts... well that speaks volumes -- s does the fact that in many cases, open source server software has dethroned commercial equivalents. That means the market is willing to go open source when it's good enough. And the corollary that open source desktop software just isn't there. (Nor do I think it ever will on the whole, for various reasons, but that's well beyond the scope of this discussion.)
--- End quote ---
Maybe off-topic since I don't know about Altium/Kicad, but I have to disagree. I don't really like LibreOffice, but I don't think MSOffice is any better. It was funny when the .docx became a thing and suddenly MSOffice users with older versions couldn't open .docx documents. I know many people that changed to LibreOffice just for that. Of course, these were individuals. Bureaucrats and people in any companies just asked their bosses to upgrade.
About Gimp/Photoshop, there's one thing Gimp never will do: to handle Pantone colors, because it's propietary. However if you work in pre-printing, you need to handle Pantone. Just imagine what will happen if say a big bank purchases a full page in your paper, then there's a disagreement about the color used in their corporate logo. Unless you can show evidence you used the correct Pantone reference, you are screwed big time. So, no, GIMP never will replace Photoshop in these habitats. But for any other uses, I would say yeah, GIMP is as good as Photoshop. Again, experienced users are the most reticent: where the fucking sharpen mask is in this crap?
Things are different when getting into the server environment, there are people that knows better than average users, and average users usually don't notice which software is running in the servers, so no problem. A very marked point was when, after London Stock Exchange CTO said loud that, even if the most important stock exchanges around the world had already changed to open source because, well, RedHat and realtime trading, London was to remain with MS because they got full MS support. Then, the day Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were going to the sharks, London Stock Exchange system crashed, and the full MS support couldn't make it to stand up again in time. So UK/european sharks didn't got their cut. AFAIK, that CTO got fired, London Stock Exchange has RedHat now, and I never heard of any other CTO saying they were to remain with MS no matter what.
I however agree with you in that time is money, and getting all the people proficient in a new software means a huge amount of money for a company, even if the features are there. Change will only happen when/if it makes sense crematistically.
Faringdon:
The fact that Altium is the most commonly used one in China says it all..the Chinese are the worlds best EE's now...so if they pick Altium, it must be the best.....the Chinese could have hacked up any layout software...but they picked Altium...thats a stunning endorsment for Altium.
Zero999:
--- Quote from: tooki on May 15, 2023, 07:59:51 am ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on May 14, 2023, 09:50:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on May 14, 2023, 04:30:21 pm ---Basically, "KiCad is just as good as Altium" is a typical open-source software fanboy claim. It's just as untrue as the claims that "LibreOffice is just as good as Microsoft Office"
--- End quote ---
I don't know about Altium vs KiCAD, but I have to disagree with you about LibreOffice vs MS Office. I find MS Office virtually unusable. It's appalling. LibreOffice is much better. I've taken work home, just so I can use LibreOffice, because MS Office is too slow and clunky. It's not a matter of taking time to get used to it. I've used plenty of other GUIs in my time, not just on Windows, but other platforms and have definitely found MS Office to be one of the worst.
--- End quote ---
Forget about the user interface for a moment. (Especially since that is, to an extent, a matter of taste and familiarity.)
The issue is that LibreOffice's feature set isn't nearly as broad. It's more than enough for basic tasks, but it's simply missing many advanced things. So when people say it's "just as good", they're people who have yet to run into the absence of a feature. They don't consider that the other features are used by other people, and aren't just useless fluff.
(Also, they're much less disciplined about API stability. I worked at a software company whose product integrates with word processors. LibreOffice Writer was a constant problem, because the scripting API would often break with updates. Word's scripting and add-on APIs just worked. To this day they haven't even bothered trying to make an add-on for Writer.)
It's the same with the other examples I gave: the feature sets simply are not there. They may be adequate for casual users. (Including people who occasionally use them for professional work.) But they aren't sufficiently feature-rich for serious professional use. You need features that simply aren't there. You may be able to achieve the same end result, but it'll take more work in the less-capable program, so with time being money, professionals will pay for the more efficient tool. And that's precisely why professionals aren't going to switch to KiCad in droves anytime soon.
--- End quote ---
What features does MS Office have that you absolutely need?
I've found MS Office to be much worse than LO, when it comes to transferring files between versions. It would regularly break things more often. Pick your poison.
--- Quote from: EEVblog on May 15, 2023, 02:41:25 am ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on May 14, 2023, 10:21:28 pm ---
--- Quote from: EEVblog on May 14, 2023, 01:42:16 pm ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on May 14, 2023, 11:27:56 am ---You can. But it depends on the jurisdiction you are in and thus whether copyright is enforced. I don't think I'm telling anyone something new when I state that companies like Altium are very likely to create holes in their licensing system on purpose in order to gain traction in markets where they can't get into due to their pricing. Once those markets mature and the legal system improves, the money is raked in. See it like university licensing; get people used to a product and they are likely to keep using the product in their professional career. And this is not something that happens only far away. I've spend quite a few years in various jobs where the software provided by the company wasn't paid for.
--- End quote ---
Altium spent a long time watching with tears in their eyes as practically the entire Chinese design market uses Altium 99SE for free, it was the industry standard, and they couldn't do anything about it.
They still struggled when I was there, and are still struggling today to convert these into legit licenses I'm sure.
They don't do it deliberately.
--- End quote ---
Sorry, but how can near 100% market penetration be bad? Ofcourse nobody will officially admit that they tolerate piracy (not internally or externally). But financially it is a huge win as it takes zero marketing costs to win new customers. The customers are there, locked into the ecosystem and they only need to be made to pay. Imagine a Chinese company made a PCB design package and Altium would need to try and penetrate that market? It is almost a lost cause.
--- End quote ---
Yes, it's not a bad thign to have everyone using a pirated version of sofwtare making it the defacto standard. Makes it easier to try and convert people over to actually paying for it.
But what I'm saying is that they didn't deliberately do that, it's just the situation they found themselves in.
--- End quote ---
I don't see any evidence the Chinese copyright system will change and start to force Chinese companies to pay for Altium. Why would they? As I said it makes the government too much money in tax revenues. I bet they selectively enforce copyright. When it's a Chinese company, selling software to other countries, they definitely will enforce it, because it makes them money, but allowing people to use foreign software for free benefits them too much to stop.
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