Future of stand-alone Eagle on Linux

[ebastler]

You implied the Eagle activation process was always needed and the Autodesk process was the same except for needing to do it every 30 days. I pointed out a massive difference that you glossed over, attempting to minimize legitimate concerns many of us have with subscription licensing.

Sure, I tried to maliciously minimize your legitimate concerns, I consider all of you to be stupid, and I love Eagle, Cadsoft and Autodesk and worship them three times a day. Any more words you want to put into my mouth? 

[PlainName]

and the "regular" cost for the standard tool is only US$400 per year. This means that the thousands of people who already use Fusion360 for MCAD will get Fusion PCB for free when it finally arrives

It means that's what they want you to think it means. But come the day when Fusion360 gets a decent PCB facility, what's to stop them bumping the price? Or even making ECAD a paid optional part? Nothing.

They are fixated on the cloud because that's the way to enforce subscriptions and, more importantly, lock-in. It is purely a money-grab feature, and that should tell you whether MCAD + ECAD will be 'only' $400/yr when it counts.

[Bassman59]

and the "regular" cost for the standard tool is only US$400 per year. This means that the thousands of people who already use Fusion360 for MCAD will get Fusion PCB for free when it finally arrives

It means that's what they want you to think it means. But come the day when Fusion360 gets a decent PCB facility, what's to stop them bumping the price? Or even making ECAD a paid optional part? Nothing.

I have no illusions that they'll continue to offer F360 for only $400/yr, especially once the ECAD goes live. Maybe they will charge more for it -- after all, who wants to pay for a feature they don't use? (Like Altium and their FPGA crap.)

But, then again, they have to recoup the cost of actually creating the product, right? Say the price doubled to $800/yr. That's still a lot cheaper than Altium.

Does everyone here give away their products? Maybe that's it.

This is what I honestly don't understand. This is ostensibly a forum for professional engineers. That means: people who make a living designing and selling products.

Please,  tell me, who here doesn't think they should charge what the market will bear for their work? Who here works for a company that gives away their products?

Sometimes I think this forum is inhabited only by hobbyists.

[james_s]

But, then again, they have to recoup the cost of actually creating the product, right? Say the price doubled to $800/yr. That's still a lot cheaper than Altium.

Does everyone here give away their products? Maybe that's it.

This is what I honestly don't understand. This is ostensibly a forum for professional engineers. That means: people who make a living designing and selling products.

Please,  tell me, who here doesn't think they should charge what the market will bear for their work? Who here works for a company that gives away their products?

Sometimes I think this forum is inhabited only by hobbyists.

The thing is, I think Altium already has the professional market locked up, maybe it's the "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality or maybe the product is really that much better, I don't know, but I don't see there being a lot of room for competing expensive commercial products, even if one of them is somewhat less expensive.

On the other end of the spectrum is KiCAD, it meets the needs of most hobbyists, prosumers and even some professionals, it's free, maybe someone wouldn't mind paying for something if they use it to make money but who is going to pay for something they can get for free?

Another factor is engineers in general are often able to do something themselves rather than pay someone else to do it, my dad had that trait, I inherited that trait, I know a lot of other engineers that have a similar mentality. We're just not in the habit of hiring someone because whether it's changing a water pump in the car, repairing a loose railing, building a deck or fixing the TV, we just do it ourselves. That has skewed my whole scale of what something is worth. I balk at paying $500 for something I can do in a couple of hours, even though I could easily afford to just pay.

[jpanhalt]

Sometimes I think this forum is inhabited only by hobbyists.

So?  If EEVBlog wants to restrict its membership to "professional engineers," then enjoy Farington.  I don't think that is in touch with reality.  Are you?

As an aside, I am a retired professional in another discipline.  I would never need nor even consider coming to a forum like this for help in that discipline.

[Kjelt]

Please,  tell me, who here doesn't think they should charge what the market will bear for their work? Who here works for a company that gives away their products?

Would you buy a car worth $25000 if you had to pay $1000 each month the rest of your life?
Perhaps you would.
Eagles major selling point was a pay once lifetime offline product, if you needed an upgrade then you had to pay again, fair enough.
The first thing autodesk promised ( you can read the posts on this forum) and then broke their word was to keep this licensing model.

That said for a company their pricing is right IMO, for a hobbieist it sucks because they keep removing essential parts from the fusion product like G0 rapid movement and tool change, so they pissed off the hobbieists CadCam community as well and their reputation is now: you can't trust them at all. What else will they remove next year?
So hobbieist drop them and go learn KiCad and FreeCAD 

[ebastler]

This is ostensibly a forum for professional engineers.
Sometimes I think this forum is inhabited only by hobbyists.

Hmm, let me think. Who would spend their time reading and posting on this forum, or watching Dave's often entertaining but always long-winded videos?

(a) Employed professional engineers whose job is exceedingly boring.
(b) Self-employed engineers whose business is going exceedingly badly.
(c) Self-employed engineers whose business is going exceedingly well.
(d) Hobbyists who can't work up the energy to get back to their current project.

I'm in category (d).   Which one are you?

[james_s]

Would you buy a car worth $25000 if you had to pay $1000 each month the rest of your life?
Perhaps you would.
Eagles major selling point was a pay once lifetime offline product, if you needed an upgrade then you had to pay again, fair enough.
The first thing autodesk promised ( you can read the posts on this forum) and then broke their word was to keep this licensing model.

Lots of people effectively do exactly that by leasing a car. Personally it's something I would never even consider, every time I've bought a car I've handed over a wad of cash and walked away with the signed paperwork and the keys, I have a severe allergy to recurring payments and avoid them whenever possible.

Even though I was already using KiCAD and only had Eagle installed for working with other people's projects that really rubbed me the wrong way when Autodesk did that. Plain and simple they lied, no company that is even remotely competent makes a decision like that on the fly, given the timeline they absolutely had plans to take it subscription by the time they publicly said they had no plans to do so. It was something like 6 weeks, and when a company tells a bald faced lie like that I can never really trust anything they say again.

[james_s]

Hmm, let me think. Who would spend their time reading and posting on this forum, or watching Dave's often entertaining but always long-winded videos?

(a) Employed professional engineers whose job is exceedingly boring.
(b) Self-employed engineers whose business is going exceedingly badly.
(c) Self-employed engineers whose business is going exceedingly well.
(d) Hobbyists who can't work up the energy to get back to their current project.

I'm in category (d).   Which one are you?

I'm an employed engineer (not PE) and reasonably happy in my job. I participate on the forum mostly in lieu of watching TV in the evening when I just don't have the energy to do anything more productive, and I tend to hop on here while I eat my lunch and every now and then when I just need a break. Admittedly I rarely watch the videos anymore but I consumed those under similar circumstances.

[jpanhalt]

This is ostensibly a forum for professional engineers.
Sometimes I think this forum is inhabited only by hobbyists.

Hmm, let me think. Who would spend their time reading and posting on this forum, or watching Dave's often entertaining but always long-winded videos?

(a) Employed professional engineers whose job is exceedingly boring.
(b) Self-employed engineers whose business is going exceedingly badly.
(c) Self-employed engineers whose business is going exceedingly well.
(d) Hobbyists who can't work up the energy to get back to their current project.

I'm in category (d).   Which one are you?

None of the above.  I am a hobbyist (non-engineer) in electronics and often want a second opinion.  I have no problem staying engaged with my projects, time allowing.

[jpanhalt]

Lots of people effectively do exactly that by leasing a car. Personally it's something I would never even consider, every time I've bought a car I've handed over a wad of cash and walked away with the signed paperwork and the keys, I have a severe allergy to recurring payments and avoid them whenever possible.

There are various reasons to lease capital equipment.  For cars used in business, I believe it is often the artificial difference in accounting between operating expenses and capital expenses.  For personal use, it is ego (driving a new car) or ignorance.

[PlainName]

That's still a lot cheaper than Altium

I didn't buy Altium because it was cheap. It's a lot of bang for the buck, but significantly it doesn't need Altium to run, isn't tied to a specific machine, doesn't need a license server, doesn't get forced updates. I'm happy to pay for stability (OK, I'd prefer it cheaper, but one has to be reasonable).

So your $800/yr would make Altium cheap after 3 years (depending on if you got the cheap deal or not). But Altium is one hell of a bigger bang than FusionPCB will be. There are people using seriously old Altium still, but there will be no-one using old Fusion360.