Rumor has it...

[EEVblog]

Rumor has it that several former Altium coders will now be working on Eagle.

[ataradov]

The end result is rarely due to coders, it is more due to managers. Coders help of course, but transforming Eagle into Altium may be easier if you just start from scratch.

[DerekG]

The end result is rarely due to coders, it is more due to managers.

Quite right. Management need to instruct the coders to advance the code such that it implements the features that the sales division are requesting (hopefully after talking with their existing user base).

It may end up yet that Autodesk's purchase of CadSoft was the best thing that could have happened to EAGLE CAD.

Let's hope so!

[bandgap]

The end result is rarely due to coders, it is more due to managers. Coders help of course, but transforming Eagle into Altium may be easier if you just start from scratch.

Agreed. And I doubt the Altium coders will be able to revert the direction toward the cloud that Eagle seems to be going in (and I'm not just talking about the subscription model.)

[NivagSwerdna]

https://diptrace.com/buy/offer/

 

[tszaboo]

I dont think there was anything wrong with the code. It is the UI and the strange, backwards design choices that make it a bad software.
I mean, even if they would implement all the missing features it wouldn't be competitive.

[mars01]

The end result is rarely due to coders, it is more due to managers. Coders help of course, but transforming Eagle into Altium may be easier if you just start from scratch.

True enough, but ...
Autodesk already has one of the former Altium managers, Matt Berggren. Now they may have employed some programmers that are familiar with the algorithms found in Altium Designer. A good combo for Eagle.
Those programmers may not be allowed to use the code from Altium, but you know how engineering is done now-a-day: take something from here, an idea from there and you get your own product.

I guess Eagle is now getting an upgrade: a new pair of faster wings.

[james_s]

IMHO it doesn't matter either way. The rental-only model along with their bold faced lies leading up to the switch makes Eagle irrelevant, it's a non-starter. Every person I know who was using it has either frozen on the version they had or moved on to something else.

[technolomaniac]

On the contrary, Altium had been an engineering-led company for 25+ years.  And the close relationship between developers and front-line staff / customers is what made the transition from Protel (weird, Tasmanian company / SW with a strange UI and unconventional pricing model, workflow, data / file format, etc) to Altium / Altium Designer possible. 

We became the leader, eventually supplanting the deeply entrenched "orcad/pads" stack, despite almost every headwind you might imagine.  In fact, I dont ever recall the company having Product Managers until after that period and long after Nick Martin (founder and CEO) 'left'. 

The great thing about this industry is that it's small, led by a handful of amazing technologists and of course that gaggle of business dudes (I fall into that last bucket as much as I'd love to be in the first!).

As Dave's pointed out, there are ex Altium dudes working at Autodesk.  Altium's new VP of Marketing is an ex Autodesk guy.  Question is: what happens when EAGLE's UI / UX is tidied up and we add better rules / routing (sketch, bus, better diff pair, etc), better MCAD integration, better library management, release management, etc.  We know how to do it but we also have the freedom to do it the way many of us wanted to all along (and with the experience of building these things sometimes 3, 4, 5 different ways, each time getting better as we went).  We dont need to be Altium Designer.  We need to be EAGLE and we need to rethink *everything*.  Even if we reach the same conclusions. 

Sure, subscription is a headwind for some (for us just as much as it might be for you) but thinking about cadsoft / EAGLE, consider the parallels: i.e. strange SW from some far off place in Bavaria, with a different dialect (#respect to my Tasmanian friends, but you dudes are hard to understand sometimes!), weird unconventional UI, strange workflow, unconventional approach to just about every feature...Reminds me a lot of where Protel was in 99/00.  And I for one (and Im not the only one) have first hand experience making that transition from the underdog to the incumbent.  The development team is likewise charged up and ready for the challenge. 

FTR, I have enormous respect for my friends still at Altium, still think Altium Designer is the "tool to beat" and I'm proud of everything we achieved over there.  However, at the same time, I look forward to growing EAGLE's market position at a price point that *nobody* is ready to contend with.  We aren't doing this to drive incremental growth.  We're doing this to see EAGLE and KiCAD take over the world.  (Yep, you heard me right.)

[rx8pilot]

Every person I know who was using it has either frozen on the version they had or moved on to something else.

I tried to switch - but could not afford the learning curve of a new piece of software. At the moment, I have back-to-back projects that will continue for about 6 months with no room for learning new ECAD. That is the ONLY reason I am still on Eagle. I hate it so much - even with the most recent improvements - it is a dog in too many ways. Kind of like a massive wound that has been patched with a thousand band-aids. As soon as I have a reasonable gap in my schedule - I will be on the hunt for another option. One that does not take me back to 1995 every time I use it. Surprised I didn't have to FAX an order form and snail mail a money order to buy it.

Not sure it Altium coders can make a difference - as stated it is up to management. At least they will have the option (hopefully) to re-do the entire graphics engine, re-do the routing engine, re-do the process of defining and management of new parts. Add space mouse support.

It really needs a near total do-over. It's not even worth my time to list my gripes, the list would be a mile long.

[lundmar]

We're doing this to see EAGLE and KiCAD take over the world.  (Yep, you heard me right.)

+1 for KiCad

[EEVblog]

On the contrary, Altium had been an engineering-led company for 25+ years.  And the close relationship between developers and front-line staff / customers is what made the transition from Protel (weird, Tasmanian company / SW with a strange UI and unconventional pricing model, workflow, data / file format, etc) to Altium / Altium Designer possible. 

Altium ultimately became a "vision driven" company. It was Nick Martin's FPGA vision, or it was the highway. Altium mostly floundered for more than a decade under that "vision", and the engineering customers hated it. They didn't switch because there was nothing better at the price point, and it's hard to switch your everyday use CAD package in a professional environment.

[nctnico]

Sure, subscription is a headwind for some

For me it is a non-starter and there are very good reasons:
- Long term support of products (which may be longer than the software is available or worth paying for).
- If a company goes through a rough time and can't pay the bills then disabling key pieces of software is like taking away the legs from a table.
- Availability of the software manufacturer. What if Eagle goes belly up or is no longer maintained? Who keeps the licensing servers running? Cadsoft/Eagle has been taken over a couple of times already in the past couple of years.

[KE5FX]

Question is: what happens when EAGLE's UI / UX is tidied up and we add better rules / routing (sketch, bus, better diff pair, etc), better MCAD integration, better library management, release management, etc. 

Answer is: you still don't get to seize access to my IP and rent it back to me.

[technolomaniac]

That's simply not correct.  And last I looked, I'm the only one here that's actually fed his family on a quota selling Altium Designer (which means I spent my days and nights in front of customers discussing what was new and why it would help them!)    The truth is that ALL the while the FPGA tools were being developed, so was 3D PCB, the Vault, Subversion / VCS integration, outjobs / release management, the data management tools, simetrix / simplus support, better routing tools, pin / part swapping, etc.  To say that if you didnt support the FPGA workflow at Altium you were shown the door is untrue and a vast oversimplification of what was being developed over almost 10 years.  I know, I lived it and was very close to the center of that development effort. 

Most of the development team was NOT focused on FPGA.  So please dont rewrite history.  This is not accurate and unfair to the guys that built all of the other capabilities that made it easy to displace PADS / OrCAD / Allegro / DX / Expedition.  Again, I fed my family on those features and knew first hand where we started at the beginning of the sales process, what customers responded to, and felt perhaps more directly than anyone here the effects of where we ended up at the end of the competitive bake-off.   -MB

[technolomaniac]

Your IP is not under fire.  You can keep saying this but it's false.  Any tool you own / use is not your IP (even KiCAD).  Your IP is what you create with it.  And nobody has taken that away from you, whether subscription or perpetual.  Period.

[james_s]

What happens to that IP if the tools needed to do anything productive with it are locked out? If I don't pay to update my software I don't get any updates, I can still fire it up 20 or more years later and use it if I need to manipulate some old project. With rental software that is not the case, no matter how you spin it.

[technolomaniac]

EAGLE continues to open ANY file, of any complexity, in the free license.  You can even generate outputs from that data (Gerber, drill, etc), regardless of license.  Now if that's developed in something without an open file format?  Good luck reading that file data (MFC stream writer makes binary files fun to try and reverse engineer...best of luck getting your data out).  And when that SW you have stops running on a modern operating system (saw this with Tango, Master Designer, the old OrCAD SDT format, etc)?  You're out of luck.  And dont bother to try and reverse enigineer desktop file formats without the SW.  Cant be done. 

Truth is, EAGLE data is about as safe as anyone could hope because it's human readable and because we provide the ability to load any file regardless of license type; even continue to produce outputs from it. 

[ataradov]

EAGLE continues to open ANY file, of any complexity, in the free license.

But not edit. So if I have some IC that is no longer available in DIP 10 years later, and I want to replace it by SOIC equivalent, I'm out of luck.

[technolomaniac]

Are you still using the same SW 10 years later on a later operating system?  That raises questions about whether the SW will generate the same outputs from the data sources given the change in OS / OS-specific libraries.  Are you archiving the OS as well?  And what about the HW?  Are you maintaining the legacy machine as well?  If not, you put all of that data at risk with any change at any level. Having worked as an engineer I never recall us keeping our legacy machines around to support 20 year old files.  We always imported legacy files into the new OS / new SW, updated them, validated they were the same and re-released to ensure we had a current, canonical copy of the data.  Otherwise we put ourselves at risk of one day not having access to the information *for good*. 

[ataradov]

I save all distros for all software I ever used. And the OS thing was never a problem.

But we get your point, you are  powerless to change anything, so you need to defend whatever position you have.

Buying software with no strings attached is better for consumers. That's why corporations don't like it. Makes them actually work, so you buy the next version, inserted of just charging monthly fees.

Or just give an option. Why not let me pay you $500-1000 and get the software. Let others pay $15/month, if they want to.

[KE5FX]

Are you still using the same SW 10 years later on a later operating system?  That raises questions about whether the SW will generate the same outputs from the data sources given the change in OS / OS-specific libraries.  Are you archiving the OS as well?  And what about the HW?  Are you maintaining the legacy machine as well?  If not, you put all of that data at risk with any change at any level. Having worked as an engineer I never recall us keeping our legacy machines around to support 20 year old files.  We always imported legacy files into the new OS / new SW, updated them, validated they were the same and re-released to ensure we had a current, canonical copy of the data.  Otherwise we put ourselves at risk of one day not having access to the information *for good*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine

But you knew that.

[ikrase]

Yeah, pretty much.

I intend to use Diptrace going forward.

Personally, I just want the GNU GPL to eat the lunch if SolidWorks/Dassault, AutoCAD, MS Office and everybody else. Sadly, something in the open source mindset seems to revolt against making software actually practical to use.

[Cerebus]

Are you still using the same SW 10 years later on a later operating system?  That raises questions about whether the SW will generate the same outputs from the data sources given the change in OS / OS-specific libraries.  Are you archiving the OS as well?  And what about the HW?  Are you maintaining the legacy machine as well?  If not, you put all of that data at risk with any change at any level. Having worked as an engineer I never recall us keeping our legacy machines around to support 20 year old files.  We always imported legacy files into the new OS / new SW, updated them, validated they were the same and re-released to ensure we had a current, canonical copy of the data.  Otherwise we put ourselves at risk of one day not having access to the information *for good*.

About as classic an example of a straw man argument as I ever saw.

I quote: "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.".

I wish that people who want to defend their favourite vendor's choice to go 'subscription only' (i.e. this is not an Eagle/Autocad only argument) would just be honest and admit that 'subscription only' is a 'my way or the highway' offering and stop trying to pretend that it's anything other than  an exercise in guaranteeing a revenue stream. Of course, if enough customers opt for 'highway' there is no revenue stream.

Nobody who advances the argument of "I want a copy of the software, on my machine, that continues to work whatever" will be persuaded by anything other than getting what they want. Whatever the level of rhetoric or sophistry employed, they will only settle for getting what they want. Spending time arguing with them is a fool's errand. (I, by the way, would be one of those customers, had I not already junked Eagle years ago.)

Over the years I've heard many variations of "the customer is king", "you only get rich by giving customers what they want", etc.etc. Those might be 'old saws', but they contain more than a small element of truth. Wilfully ignoring, even gainsaying, what customers want instead of giving it to them is a fruitless endeavour.

As to the argument forwarded - as someone else has said "virtual machine". It's almost trivial nowadays to containerize an application, its operating system and all the libraries and ancillary software needed to run it into a single bundle that can be archived and redeployed later in minutes, or possibly even seconds. Anybody who is not doing so, and archiving such an environment along with their CAD files is missing a stroke that will save them much pain and frustration if they need to pull something out and rework it in three years time.

[DerekG]

I know, I lived it and was very close to the center of that development effort. 

Gee, I would run as fast as I could if I was in anyway involved with the development of Altium Designer.

In 1996, Protel 2.8 could not scroll to the left when using the mouse without also pressing the left cursor key on the keyboard.

A later version of Altium did away with the full screen view.

10 years later in 2006, the sales people at Altium assured me both these problems were "fixed", so I upgraded.

Well ............... the scroll to the left problem was still there & the "full screen mode" no longer removed the scroll bars at the edge of the screen .............. so it was really just a "mini or pseudo" full screen mode.

If Australia had the Fair Trading Act that is has today, I would have been entitled to a refund.

.................. and I also remember talking with Nick Martin in around 1993 (at a Protel training course in Adelaide) when I was working with Protel's bottom end product "EasyTrax" for a demo copy of Protel AutoTrax so that I could see if the step up was worthwhile for my (very) small company. He laughed at me & said to take his word that the step up would be very worthwhile (no AutoTrax demo package was available).

My ............. how things have changed.

In 2014 I moved over to DipTrace as my preferred tool. A group of about 6 of us have slowly been working with the Ukraine coders to get the better features of Altium incorporated into later DipTrace releases. These past 2 years has seen vast improvements in the functionality of DipTrace as a result.

So, for me, I would never employ anyone who worked at Altium (except Dave), either in their sales department or in their coding department. I have found that they are either untruthful or poor with their coding skills.