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 don't think it's simply "engineers hate open source". Most of the open source tools in the embedded space are just a bit crap. The reality is that good software needs many thousands of hours of development time. The embedded space is actually pretty small in development budget terms - so fewer engineers who might devote time - and also there's less overlap in skillset - electronic design engineers rarely have the software skills required to develop EDA software.

Most of the incredibly well used robust open source packages are sponsored by large tech companies. The embedded space just hasn't had that kind of sponsorship.

>Most of the open source tools in the embedded space are just a bit crap.

Anyone who sincerely thinks GIMP can replace Photoshop or is otherwise good will never understand why professionals eschew open source software when there's work that needs doing.

GIMP is kinda odd insofar as for me (who learned to use Photoshop 25y ago) that it (just like every other tool) just seemed cumbersome and clunky with the shortcuts. I couldn't even use German Photoshop because some shortcuts are different. Some other tools were barely usable for what I tried to do, so I think it's unfair to single out GIMP, although the old multi-windowed interface was just something else.

The functionality wasn't even the biggest problem. And JFTR, I'm not talking about anything that came to Photoshop in the last... 15 years or so, I was just slicing PSDs for table layouts and making wallpapers, not actually editing photos like a pro :P