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Poll

Give away a 1 year Eagle license?

No, it's a trap! It'll lock you of your own work!
[ 9 ] (60%)
Yes, it might really help a group or project!
[ 6 ] (40%)

Total Members Voted: 15

Voting closed: November 12, 2011, 03:51:19 pm

Topic: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide. (Read 25077 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #15 –
[quote author="Zeta"]
PD: The Hobbyist licence is priced at $125 while the pro version is like $2000 why not ask for 5-10 Hobbyist licences xDD[/quote]


I vote it.
Still learning
-Arup

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #16 –
100x160mm is a standard eurocard size pcb being sold in europe (you purchase pcb with a photo sensitive layer on it it comes in that size). The free version limits us to 100x80 and that's only half of the eurocard == pretty lame.

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #17 –
[quote author="arhi"]100x160mm is a standard eurocard size pcb being sold in europe (you purchase pcb with a photo sensitive layer on it it comes in that size). The free version limits us to 100x80 and that's only half of the eurocard == pretty lame.[/quote]
Really?
Here boards are available in 100x100, 100x150 and 150x150 size normally. I use 100x100 most time. And yes, I've used light edition (free) eagle to make designs of 100x100mm. That doesn't matches to your said 100x80 size limit.

See

http://snpr.cm/g2vtSN.png
http://snpr.cm/8NeYHz.png
http://snpr.cm/yj3BoG.png

The above shown board was of 86x100 size which I etched to a 100x100 clad piece.
Still learning
-Arup

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #18 –
The size is related to the area where you can place your components. There is no problem related to board dimensions as I know. Also if I remember correctly there was a number of pins restriction too.

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #19 –
[quote author="arupbsk"]Here boards are available in 100x100, 100x150 and 150x150 size normally.[/quote]

The regular photo sensitive ones go from 160x100 and up (I think noone sells smaller ones) so you have to cut it yourself if you need smaller board... anynow 160x100 is kinda "standard", I'd expect a free version not to go below that.

In any way, don't get me wrong, Eagle is relatively good tool and the value they give for free ain't small; also what they are willing to give for free for a year attm is still not a small value - yes, it's not ideal, ideally would be that they go open source and give unrestricted binaries to everyone :D but what they are willing to give for a year ain't that bad also

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #20 –
[quote author="arupbsk"][quote author="arhi"]100x160mm is a standard eurocard size pcb being sold in europe (you purchase pcb with a photo sensitive layer on it it comes in that size). The free version limits us to 100x80 and that's only half of the eurocard == pretty lame.[/quote]
Really?
Here boards are available in 100x100, 100x150 and 150x150 size normally. I use 100x100 most time. And yes, I've used light edition (free) eagle to make designs of 100x100mm. That doesn't matches to your said 100x80 size limit.

See

http://snpr.cm/g2vtSN.png
http://snpr.cm/8NeYHz.png
http://snpr.cm/yj3BoG.png

The above shown board was of 86x100 size which I etched to a 100x100 clad piece.[/quote]

It's strange, because free Eagle HAS limitation of 100x80 mm! I bought "standard" license a few years ago in order to be able to have multiple schematics sheets and up to 160x100 mm board with 4 layers...

P.S. I'm against of a "new" Eagle (after v5.6.0 it was purchased by element14/farnell), because new owner removed all mentions of any kind of "freewareness" from Eagle advertisement materials (I got one of it, it made me scared and I scanned and posted it to adafrut forum and after that some really unhappy guy from farnell tried to shut me up)

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #21 –
I had no idea farnell purchased cadsoft (not sure what is the difference between premierfarnell.com and farnell.com I see the same logo - different color) ... looks like 12MEUR ... good price...

Anyhow, I see this: http://www.cadsoftusa.com/downloads/fre ... anguage=en .. I don't see that they removed free version?!

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #22 –
Farnell, Premier Farnell, Newark and Element14 are owned by the same company.

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #23 –
I think, more accurately, Premier Farnell plc is the "company". Farnell in Australia is owned by Premier Farnell plc and now uses the "trading name" of element14. Thus, Premier Farnell plc trades as Farnell in Europe, Newark in the US, Canada and Mexico, Farnell Newark in Brazil, and element14 across the Asia-Pacific.

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #24 –
[quote author="arhi"]Anyhow, I see this: http://www.cadsoftusa.com/downloads/fre ... anguage=en .. I don't see that they removed free version?![/quote]

cadsoftusa.com is still have "freeware" option, but all other places (including paper materials) are not:

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #25 –
Also they plan to charge money for upgrade to v6 - see here:
Quote
PLUS, for a limited time, buy any module of CadSoft EAGLE and receive a FREE Upgrade to the New Version 6, available soon.

So I will stop use Eagle as soon as v6 will be officially released as latest and greatest...

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #26 –
Oh come now. It is perfectly normal business practice to charge for major version upgrades of commercial software.

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #27 –
[quote author="dpropicweb"]Oh come now. It is perfectly normal business practice to charge for major version upgrades of commercial software.[/quote]

I understand that :)
I bought Eagle v4, but got key for v5 that works for both v4 and v5
And I don't want to pay anything to get v6 - sorry ;)

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #28 –
well, you can continue to use v5 unlimited right?

anyhow, I would constrain my self from spreading fud as attm nothing is "known". When Sun purchased MySQL whole bunch of ppl started spreading fud on "what will happen" - nothing did, except some ppl left, some ppl were hired .. not a single other thing changed wrt mysql and mysql's community .. the Oracle purchased Sun, again "they will close MySQL", "they will kill it", "let us hurry and learn pgsql" .. etc etc ... what happened is the best release of MySQL EVER (5.5) with less bugs then any release in mysql's history, the features ppl waited for years were created, bugs 5-6 years old were fixed etc etc ... and yes, if you go to www.oracle.com you will not find a single word about how mysql is free and how you can download it, use it for free (under GPL licence), they only talk on oracle.com about commercial/oem licences, subscriptions, trainings etc. etc... but they never killed the GPL side of MySQL, everything is just as it was (many things are even better wrt both gpl and commercial users) ... So IMO it is more then normal that all marketing material farnell now makes about eagle talk about "what you can purchase" and that it does not mention freeware version.... but unless they actually kill the free version and remove the download url's, I'd stay calm :)

Now, as we are all aware - they CAN decide today (or tomorrow or in 3 years) to change licences, remove free version, push price to million dollars per licence if they wish so... You can decide to trust them or not. I personally do not use products with licence that expires. I can survive with "limited time free upgrade", that's ok, but I want to be able to use my licenced app in 20 years from now legally, yeah I can't upgrde but who cares. AFAIK if you now purchase a licence for Eagle v5 you *can* use it legally in 20 years, you will not be able to upgrade free to version 666 of the Eagle but who cares, your v5 will continue to work.

Wrt free version, you know that Eagle files can be read by Eagle only. That suck big time. Free version might be gone tomorrow, might never be gone, if you chose not to trust the current/future owner of Eagle, because you are, like me, a person that explicitly don't trust companies, or for any other reason, then the only available solutions are:
1. make your own EDA tool
2. go with some GPL/BSD/otheropensourcelicence EDA tool and invest time & money to add features you require and that tool you chose is missing (KiCAD is gaining community base very fast, way faster then gEDA package, lot of ppl joining in, basically the schematic capture is imo better then Eagle, everything else requires a lot of polishing but compared to how much polishing Eagle requires KiCAD ain't that bad at all ... it lacks the scripting functionality of Eagle but since you have a source you can actually embed any functionality directly into KiCAD, no need for external scripts :D )
3. purchase a licence of an commercial EDA tool you like and consider that "what you purchased is what you will get for that money" - consider no free updates nor upgrades ever, so if you get them from time to time (free or with discount) cool, but don't count on that.

Note that apart from Eagle there is number of other free commercial eda tools available, many without limitations of the free Eagle version, some surprisingly good (for e.g. design spark is surprisingly good free eda tool with a single flaw and that's "winblows only" .. it actually imports Eagle files, I forgot about it, so there is actually a way to read your eagle files if eagle is gone :D !!! designspark v3 also have a simulation interface so it should be able to talk to spice and other free simulation tools - I have not tried that but .... the gui is 10 times faster and more ergonomic then eagle, it looks better, it is faster .. worth a try .. if you compare it side by side with Eagle, Eagle will lose by a lot)

check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_EDA_software

Re: Possible Eagle license giveaway? You decide.

Reply #29 –
[quote author="arhi"]well, you can continue to use v5 unlimited right?[/quote]

I was on v4.16 for a very long time until I saw that most of the current libraries/scripts/projects on the Net are for v5 only, so I was "forced" by stream to be switched to v5 - and I expect the same for v6...

P.S. Open source software is a different story - if company that owned this software will die (or abandon its work) we are always free to fork it from last available source base - I'm perfectly OK with that, but Eagle is not open source...

P.P.S. Previous owner of Eagle was software company - so they needed all kind of price tags to survive, but current one is not - it's component distributor and also they have PCB service (if I not mistaken), so may be there is a more sense for them to have Eagle free and earn much more money on side-services as purchasing components by BOM and order PCB production directly from the software...
 

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