Linux Fund and gEDA Project partner to raise funds to boost gEDA/PCB usability
Dec 15th, 17:21 UTC
Help bring open source circuit board design into the mainstream
December 15th, 2008 - Linux Fund is pleased to announce that it has begun fundraising to enable gEDA Project developer DJ Delorie to enhance gEDA's flagship open source PCB layout program "PCB". This work will significantly upgrade PCB's usability and utility for electronics designers and educators, making it an attractive open source alternative to commercial PCB design tools. gEDA/PCB joins the VectorSection DWG interpreter project as part of Linux Fund's growing open engineering and hardware initiative.
PCB is a twenty year old application. Originally written in 1990 for the Atari ST, the program was ported to Unix in 1994. Over the years, it has been maintained and extended by a series of developers who have added improvements and new features, including a GTK port and the ability to export Gerber files. Mr Delorie is currently one of the chief developers involved with PCB, having become involved with the project in 2002.
DJ Delorie is well known within the open source community as the author of djgpp, a popular port of the gcc compiler to DOS. He is also a long time user of PCB, having used the program to design a net-enabled alarm clock which won second place in Circuit Cellar Magazine's "Microchip embedded control" design contest in 2007. His commitment to work on PCB usability enhancements in conjunction with funding from the Linux Fund represents a major step forward for the gEDA Project, as well as a welcome boost to the open-hardware movement.
gEDA/PCB upgrade work description:
- Implement forward annotation using action scripts
- GUI modernization
- Enhance ability to create and edit arbitrary layer types
- Develop a new Footprint Editor
- Update Design Rule Checking
About the gEDA Project
The gEDA Project is a community of open-source developers working on creating tools for electronic design released under the GNU Public License. The project currently offers a mature suite of free software applications for electronics design, including schematic capture, attribute management, bill of materials (BOM) generation, netlisting into over 20 netlist formats, analog and digital simulation, and printed circuit board (PCB) layout.
Besides the core design tools, the gEDA Project has gathered a community of other programmers who work on their own tools while sharing the gEDA e-mail lists, administration, and community support. This extended set of electronics design applications as become known as the "gEDA Suite".
Visit geda.seul.org for more information about the gEDA Project.
About Linux Fund
Linux Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides financial and supervisory support to the open source software community. Linux Fund raises funds with its line of rewards credit cards and direct donations, and has given over half a million dollars to open source projects since its founding in 1999.
Visit www.linuxfund.org for more information about Linux Fund and to help support the gEDA/PCB Project.
(Submitted by Michael Dexter of Linux Fund)
| 
