We are shutting down Ondsel

Sometimes I envy that although I am not a SWE. I work in a field that is so close with the open source and tech scene that we don't have to rely on commercial products like some other fields. It is hard to compete or gain enough interest in some fields of engineering to any open or free solutions.

Unfortunately, I've noticed that non-SW engineers frequently turn their noses up at open-source solutions, and really the entire concept of open-source software, and seem to prefer proprietary solutions, the more expensive the better. I've seen this in the software world too, with embedded systems engineers, though Linux, gcc, etc. has made huge inroads here, though it took decades, and mainly came from the Linux adherents pushing downwards into the embedded space from the desktop space, not from any interest by the existing engineers in the embedded space.

Just look, for instance, at FPGAs: almost all the tooling is proprietary, very expensive, and very buggy too. Or look at PCB design: Altium seems to be the standard here still, despite Kicad having made huge advances and by most accounts being as good or even better. It took decades (Kicad started in 1992) for the FOSS alternatives here to really catch on much, and only really because PCBs became cheap enough for hobbyists to design and construct their own (mainly because of Chinese PCB companies), and because CERN contributed some resources.

I'm not sure what the deal is with engineers hating collaboratively-developed and freely-available software, but it's a real thing in my experience. It's like someone told them that FOSS is "socialism" and they just reflexively dismiss or hate it.

I wonder whether it is a about quality control and completeness.

Pure Software has a lot slack when it comes to delivering incomplete or (in the FOSS world ) even partially incorrect releases. Many issues can be fixed after the fact (even in production) and you can inch closer to a better version as time come goes on.

Mechanical engineering oftentimes can't work that way. An "80% solution machine" usually doesn't work at all and iteration costs (outside of 3d prototyping) can be staggeringly high.

Example: My company produces heavy "things" (20tons+) that have tight tolerances in some places. If the design is off by 2mm because of a CAD bug or unexpected/unknown UI the part could be scrap or require an expensive (read manual) rework.

There go all your software savings.

So why management would love to reduce the staggeringly high costs it's not worth the risk until an alternative is very proven.

In many projects customers contractually require is to use a specific solution.