That's a very complicated way to say "KiCad devs don't give a dead rat about what you all are talking here", because forums are usually lame, therefore you all must be noobs talking bollocks.
That's a rather jaundiced view, but given the tenor of one of the other 9 contributions in total that sethhillbrand has made here I'm not sure that it's necessarily unjustified.
You know I would pay for Kicad if the paid option was for a useable interace.
OK.
https://giving.web.cern.ch/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=6
That glib quip isn't what I'll call a highly valuable contribution from someone who presents themselves as in a position to influence KiCad's direction, especially when it makes up 11% of someone's posting to date.
The EEVBlog forum probably presents the highest concentration of EEs online. Unlike some other electronics fora it's not loaded with incentives to gain points or popularity which can heavily influence who makes contributions and why. Here you only speak up if you think you've something to contribute, and don't get a little dopamine rush of contributor points for doing so. I think that makes this a very valuable place to gather opinions, ideas, and use as a sounding board. If it was me, and I was genuinely looking for input I'd try and find a way to leverage that, rather than direct people towards vaguely defined routes to contribute and hint at privileged access to "
large design houses".
I find it all rather unconvincing. People all over the place have been bitching, justifiably, about the KiCad UI for ages. In 6.0 they've cleaned a lot up, but tab ordering is still random and crazy (especially for a hotkey centric app), keystrokes still do different things in different places, and so on. If anyone was actually interested in
listening and acting on what they hear those niggles would have been fixed ages ago.
I
wish I could find more positive things to say, but every time I start discussing KiCad (like pointing out the embarrassing release of 6.0 with big chunks of basic documentation missing) I get faced with someone whose only answer is to ignore the criticisms and fall back on "
Why don't you go off and fix it?". Not everybody who has a criticism, insight, suggestion or whatever has the skillset to "
Go and fix it.". Similarly, sethhillbrand's remarks don't sound like "
OK. Go ahead, I'm listening" but a handwaving "
If you are a professional CAD designer/engineer, we would welcome your input." followed by "
You can post issues on GitLab and we can arrange offline contact options as well to facilitate the sort of information exchange that we need to improve the system for everyone.". As I've read through quite a lot of other people's KiCad tickets on exactly the issues that I find pain points I've noticed that they tend to just get closed, not acted on, no matter how much effort someone has put into authoring the ticket. Thus I'm inclined to be highly reluctant to go and waste a few hours on creating tickets just to find them quietly and unaccountably closed a while later.
People don't want to write tickets that they suspect might quietly close without action, they don't want to engage in an "
offline contact option"* to participate in a "
facilitated information exchange"*. They want to talk, and be listened to.
*Do I
need to point out that those phrases sound like bullshit? Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but they
sound like it.