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.

> Altium seems to be the standard here still

Apple and NVIDIA are using Allegro (or customized versions thereof.)

> or even better

KiCad is faster, absolutely not better.

> very expensive

Vivado is free for a great number of devices (not just the "lite" version, either, depending on the board - U50, U55, etc.)

No open source tooling can even remotely compare in ASIC implementation flow or FPGA implementation.

>KiCad is faster, absolutely not better.

Not what I've heard, and CERN seems to think it's good enough for their particle colliders.

>No open source tooling can even remotely compare in ASIC implementation flow or FPGA implementation.

Yes, FPGA tools are a very different matter. I do wonder if this is really lock-in from vendors more than any preference by users, but still, sufficiently motivated users could reverse-engineer things to try to make a single open-source toolset that works with all vendors' FPGAs. Of course, the feasibility of this is questionable, but we've seen really impressive reverse-engineering efforts in other places in FOSS. Just look at how futile it is for YouTube to try to prevent people from downloading their videos.

Large institutions like CERN run everything. But the advanced stuff is definitely not on KiCAD. It doesn't have support for the right simulation models.

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/cern-selects-cadence-service...

"The CERN physics department is deploying the Cadence analog and digital end-to-end solutions as well as the Cadence verification and Allegro PCB solutions throughout the support of its CERN IT department."

Kicad isn't a simulator, it's a pcb designer.

Look at slide 32 and 33 https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/advanced_sim/...