[LordShredda]

The quote does say that Altium does it out of the box though? With KiCad you had to write a script and learn how the format works. Could also be introduced as a patch to upstream and have everyone benefit from it, but that's less time spent working on the circuit

[explodingwaffle]

This is coming in the next release of Kicad: https://forum.kicad.info/t/post-v9-new-features-and-developm...

The rate of development since V6 is crazy fast IMO. Very much an OSS success story.

[crote]

It's absolutely insane. Kicad v5 was usable, if you wanted to make simple projects and were willing to deal with frequently running into annoyances. Kicad v6 took forever to release, but it suddenly went from "an option for hobbyists who can't afford EAGLE / Altium" to "viable tool for not-too-complicated professional products". Ever since then every release has been filled with quality-of-life improvements - both huge improvements and fixes for small annoyances.

We saw something similar with Blender. At a certain point it becomes good enough that for some professionals it becomes a viable alternative to its obscenely expensive proprietary competition. If those companies are willing to donate $500 / seat / year to OSS instead of spending $1500 / seat / year on proprietary licensing, they can get some developer to fix the main issues they run into. This in turn means the OSS variant gets even better, which means even more companies are willing to consider switching, which means even more budget for development. Let this continue for a few years, and the OSS alternative has suddenly become best-in-class.

[bsder]

> The quote does say that Altium does it out of the box though?

Sure, if you're routing 8+ layer boards with blind vias and PCIx16 and DDR5 buses every day, go buy an Allegro or Expedition licence for 6 figures. It's absolutely worth the money.

For Altium, I find that the "showstopper bug that Altium has":"feature that Kicad doesn't have" ratio is almost always strongly in favor of Kicad.

[ericwood]

But you have recourse! It’s not ideal, but it beats being at the mercy of a vendor in most cases. Trying to hack around a closed source format is an even bigger drain.