Defending KiCAD's performance as an EDA in a lawsuit

[MiroS]

I never heard of it , but maybe there may be a   formal certification confirming certian standard required?
I can imagine that copro can have such requirement or gov. , or  military, or areo space. Signing a contract is never eliminating the need for best practices, at least in EU, if there will be not special statement  a contract is not giving the freedom for to ignore so called 'best practices'.

I can imagine that not writeln requirement can be like valid  calibration for multimeter.

Other than that there may be requirement for support and development of tool used for design, e.g. there is big mess in Linux development , it loooked like a horror story last time I considererd to propose kernel code change at kernel.org, I cancelled by myself this ideae,  Comparing to this  KiCad is well driven project where there is a small team of developers with somebody who knows the target   All in all never  but never heard of a lawsuit against  Linux ,e.g for the reason that someone did a huge development using the feature which gone sky in next kernel patch at no warrning.

[bdunham7]

Hi, I have a bit of a weird situation.  I have brought a suit for non-payment against a client.  Their response to a summary judgement included an affidavit from the current contractor stating that KiCAD is inadequate to develop a laser tag platform.  The guy appears to think that only Altium can handle the complexities of a USB D-/D+ pair or something.  So now I have to defend 'my' selection of KiCAD.  Of course 'my' is in quotes as I had walked the client through EDA options I could use and even had support from the contractor (who was originally the assembler).

So any helpful arguments for KiCAD are welcome.

Thanks!

Has your lawyer told you that you need to respond with a defense of KiCAD or are you thinking you should because you read their reply to your summary judgment motion?

[rhb]

To the OP:
The best thing to do is get a lawyer. Saying Kicad isn't suitable is likely just blowing up smoke (Kicad can do differential pair routing for USB just fine).

However I get the feeling the actual problem is much larger. A client is only refusing payment AND hiring someone else if you didn't do the job according to what you promised the client. A client is not going to wait for another contractor to re-do the job if you can finish it in time and meeting the requirements. So in the end it all comes down to what has been promised and what has been delivered.

Spot on.

I spent my career as a contract scientist/programmer in the oil industry. I *never* had a dispute with a client.  I also would never have sued for payment if the client was dissatisfied.   No happy, no payee. I did projects with brick wall deadlines imposed by the US government.  So slipping the schedule was *not* an option.  Naturally issues arose.  As soon as I knew of them I discussed the options with the client.  They always knew what they were getting, when and why.

Good luck,
Reg

[poeschlr]

There is another option here. Above OP mentions that the second contractor was originally only meant to assembly the boards. It could be that this second contractor is the root of all of this. They could simply be a better communicator than OP and have convinced the customer that all troubles faced in the assembly step are OPs fault (even if only partly true).

However, it still boils down to a lack of communication. But not necessarily only between OP and the customer but possibly more importantly between OP and the second contractor. For example if they assemble the board then they need the position data. And there needs to be a clear communication line between them and the designer. One typical problem area is the zero orientation of footprints that kind of matters for this task.
Or maybe the assembly contractor is used to getting altium projects and has no other software available to create the output for their machines and does not want the customer to fully understand why they request altium after the fact (its still a problem that OP did not check with the intended assembly house what data they need).

TlDr: I fully agree with your conclusion about lack of communication but i am not sure it is the communication between OP and the customer but mainly between OP and the assembly contractor.

[FloridaMan]

This is my first post on this forum.

The best approach to non-payment is to see if there is some other recourse, such as a lien, which doesn't require nearly as much legal effort and can be costly for the customer in that it can affect their credit and lending rates. I'm pretty sure circuit boards and chips used to be designed using hand stencils and photographic processes.

Another contractor friend of mine provides a default clause in his contracts that, after a certain period of delinquency, it includes interest and penalty rates that are like credit card default rates. He says that he's never recovered those penalties, but when he addresses it with the client, they realize what jerking him around could potentially cost them if things went to court, and he gets paid.

[ninux]

Don't forget to list KiCad's corporate sponsors!

- University of Grenoble
- CERN
- The Raspberry Pi Foundation
- Arduino LLC
- Digi-Key Electronics
- SoftPLC - US$450K worth of employee time!!
+ others

Might be worthwhile to add up the value of the major sponsors.  Lots of zeros is always impressive! 

Hi, I work at CERN and I'm designing my prototype research board with KiCAD. However, Altium is still the official tool there as it has a long history and all the production is coupled to the tool with their databases and libraries.

[Mark19960]

So, the "current contractor" has an "opinion" that KiCAD is inadequate.
Of course!

It was probably part of the sales pitch made. "we use Alitum so we are better"

That's a reach.... must have long arms.
I have used both. And both did the job I needed them to do. The EDA should not be on trial.

[themadhippy]

after a certain period of delinquency, it includes interest and penalty rates that are like credit card default rates

%
In the uk,unless something different has been agreed you can charge 8% above the base interest rate and a fixed fee between £40 to £100 depending on the debt level plus any other reasonable costs incurred .Normally a polite reminder to the debtor of these cost  is enough to get paid.

[HendriXML]

I've worked along-side people who used Altium before, but never used it myself (I talked employers out of it in the past).  I seem to remember a co-worker from many years ago telling me that it was written in some obscure language.  SmallTalk?  something weird that I have no knowledge/experience with.  Is that why it only runs on the Windows platform?  How many years will Windows still be around for engineering efforts?  Seems like Microsoft might be headed in some other direction for the future.

Altium DXP was written in Borland Delphi, which is basically an object-oriented Pascal. Back when it was introduced in the previous century, Delphi actually was a good Windows development option. But as the world moved on, and Borland went from being the preferred environment to a has-been, and Microsoft reduced the prices of their tools, few programmers chose Delphi.

Altium has been in the long process of re-writing the product for modern 64-bit Windows, while keeping data format compatibility and keeping the user interface the same. I don’t know the state of this transition.

Just to add some info from a long time Delphi developer. It can be used to create 64 bit applications. In my opinion Borland made the -kind of fatal decision- to "support" the dot net framework when it came out. It delayed the progress of other stuff, and finally did not payout. Nowadays one could however create crossplatform applications with it, like ios, android, unix, windows. Still going strong  . So there shouldn't be any reason for Altium to move to another tool.

[khs]

The guy appears to think that only Altium can handle the complexities of a USB D-/D+ pair or something.

The question is not KiCAD or Altium.

The question is the product meets the USB specifications or not.

So I would make a board (maybe with parts required for USB communication only) and check the D+/D- eye pattern by example.

If the eye pattern is inside the specifications defined by USB the customer has to pay.

Just my two cents.