Re: RE : Ideas to promote making and using free hardware designs (was Re: FSF continuously harms Free Hardware)

[Paul Sutton]

On 21/01/2022 01:05, Arthur Torrey wrote:
> An excellent post by Paul Fernhout, but I see one really HUGE problem, namely 
> that I don't know of ANY Free Software tool or tool-chain that can get a person 
> from 'beer-mat' to 'g-code'  (For those not familiar with the CNC world, g-code 
> is the 'assembly language' of the CNC manufacturing world...
>
> I am a member of the Artisan's Asylum maker-space (formerly in Somerville, MA, 
> temporarily shut down while moving to Allston) and would dearly love to be able 
> to make the hardware that I can draw and design in LibreCAD (2D) or possibly 
> FreeCAD, gCAD3D or some other Free Software 3D CAD package, but I have not been 
> able to find any way to get from those packages to g-code that I can feed to 
> our CNC machines.
>
> Instead I have to use Proprietary CAD packages (some of which have limited 
> 'Free as in Beer' offerings) to make proprietary format files in order to 
> generate (proprietary) tool-paths to feed to a (proprietary) pre-processor that 
> turns them into machine appropriate g-code....  (Ironically, at least one of 
> the machines I'm running that g-code on is using LinuxCNC as a controller).  I 
> haven't even found a path that would let me move a design from a Free CAD 
> package into one of the proprietary packages to do the tool-path steps.
>
> For electronics stuff, KiCAD is amazingly good, I've heard professional board 
> designers say that it can go head to head against the $10K / seat commercial 
> programs.  I haven't done anything in the 3D printing world, but I've heard 
> there are some packages that are at least competent for that.  However there is 
> NOTHING I've been able to find that is capable of even basic CNC machining 
> g-code, let alone anything close to modern High Speed Machining (as done by 
> things like HSM-Works)
>
> As such, Paul's proposals for OSCOMAK and other shared collections of design 
> data seem like they would be of little use if there is no way to get the 
> collected data into a new design that can be manufactured....
>
> I've been urging the FSF to put CAD onto the 'high priority' list for years, 
> but so far no luck...
>
> ART
>
> ------------------
> Arthur Torrey - <arthur_torrey@comcast.net>
> -------------------


As I understand it,  when the source code to doom was released, the 
original levels stayed as non-free with a paid option to get them.

Perhaps there could be a way to work with the hardware makers and free 
cad developers to create a similar set up where for a reasonable cost 
you can obtain the required drivers, firmware etc.

FreeCAD would remain free as in freedom, if you wanted to use it with 
specific hardware you could do so.

Just a thought,   Ideally they would make their software available for 
free software available for BSD, Linux etc.   If MacOS is based on BSD 
this can't be that difficult to port over surely.

So this is a sort of meet in the middle approach that may work,  as long 
as we, as a community respect the copyright,  and pay for these 
components that should keep the copyright holders happy.

The topic of funding projects came up at the meeting on Thursday 20th. 
So this idea is partly influenced by that and what happened with games 
such as Doom.

Regards

Paul

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