 Whoa Are we ready we're ready Really busy here. So for my talk First the shortest claimer. This is not a technical topic Okay, no one's leaving Compared to the other topics we had before really But before I start off with the talk I would like to say thank you for Javier for another round this year of organizing this deaf room And to all the other people like the guy at the camera. Thank you Okay, today I would like to talk to you about Fritzing is anyone here who has not heard about fritzing before Great, I thought okay. I asked this question this round because it's probably this way. Okay I Talk about fritzing not because I maintain fritzing actually I have Not a lot to do with fritzing But once my what my company has to do with fritzing is that we provide the fritzing fab And this is really important because I can only give advices. I do not own the brand I do not own the code. I own nothing what I just do is to provide the fritzing fab So please keep this in mind. I can only give advices through this talk Everything else is up to the fritzing This to be discussed later who is actually on fritzing but first I would like to give a short introduction on fritzing and What it actually is because you may ask yourself, okay It is something to draw PCBs to do technical sketches on electronics But how is it like compared to let's say key cat? This is a huge difference this is from the fritzing Wikipedia page and What you notice is that fritzing is not intended to be used by electrical engineers That's a major difference. It is used for designers Artists would just want to have a few LEDs blink on their shirts something like this These are people which start off with an Arduino then hook up some LEDs to the Arduino and continue to growth but because of this I believe that an application like fritzing is great for key cat to because Fritzing user later in the process maybe two years later will head over to kycat But this is a process they start off with fritzing do their sketches do their Totally weird PCBs with some strange routing doesn't matter. It's totally fine Because of this fritzing has this unique Breadboard view So most of you just say okay. What crap is this I can't do my routing with this I just do a schematic but for let's say artists This is a great way to have something really already working on your table and then bring this what you have on your table over to a schematic and this is a little way to do such and From this breadboard view you can go over to doing a PCB layout To what said here a more permanent circuit So compared to key cat fritzing is more like oh, I already have something which is actually working on my desk Now I want to professionalize it. That's a little bit different compared to other traditional EDA tools So Fritzing is widely used. How did that happen? One of the reasons is that whenever you open a book from let's say O'Reilly and Look for all the sketches within this book when it's about electronics, of course They are mostly made by fritzing Because people like this Visual breadboard view to just see okay. They can imagine that is something I can build on my own That's why it's so popular in books lectures Education also with pupils so for really basic electronics But with everyone who does basic electronics, maybe later get someone who does professional electronics and So the result is that right now Fritzing is used by 200,000 people So it's not like the last ten years. This is right now So there was some tracking within fritzing. So we know that this is true But So far so good Now it gets a little bit more interesting Because Fritzing has a lot of open-source applications Has a problem It's not able to find developers maintainers and such How do I know This probably is the Indicators you see and a lot of open source project open issues open pull requests Latest release three three years ago. Okay two years. Let's say two years The project has died Actually not because a lot of people use it, but there's no development ongoing. So the There is just no evidence that there is any development So I asked myself Well, how could that happen and the first thing was Maybe is there any money missing to pay a maintainer to really care about this project? So let's see how the fritzing open source project earns any money to Sustain or sustain a new development and to fund the development. How does that work on the one side? We have prototype manufacturers. This is our PCB thefts and EMS services which do PCBs Assembly and such such as we do and We give give 10% of every fritzing sketch which gets paid through us back to fritzing And this is enough to pay it like half a developer and the other thing is Part nicely manufacturers. So whenever you would like to have a part from your company within fritzing within the library There are parts manufacturers which pay fritzing to have their parts in the library This for example happened with or happens with spark fun spark fun has all these tiny breakout boards and Spark fun pace fritzing for this. I have no clue about the amount, but there is obviously something going on. So Money is not an issue here. What is it then? oh This is not just not a slide how is this integration into the fab looks like so the user always has the Independence to decide where to manufacture the PCB on the upper And we have just a Gerber export, but if you hit the fabricate button, you're directly redirected To the fritzing fab what I During the investigation noticed is that there's a flaw in the legal structure of fritzing and What is for me really important is that something like this does not happen to let's say key cat So what happened here? On the left we have the fritzing u.g. Which is German limited liability company and on the right is the friends of fritzing which is a which is a public association All the money goes into the limited liability company but there is or I don't know about any connection between These both parties and all the developers and everything's going on here, but here's no money no funding at all and On this side. I have no clue about this So maybe maybe strippers and hookers no idea And This is something which some have has to be changed. I have no clue on how to change this But this is the situation right now, which is like a dead end for an open source application Because the right for the fritzing brand is here But all the money is over here so We ask ourselves What to do next and I'm really passionate about this first because my company provides a fritzing fab but more Because I believe an application like fritzing is really Necessary for an ongoing stream of new electrical engineers to get young people interested in This thinking around because this is what fritzing really is good for So one idea which came to my mind is Maybe you could do a fork, but I am really afraid of forks so this is something like what happened with open office in Libre Libre office and When I ask my mom Please download Download some open source software office software. She will probably look for open office because you know it's open office So it's in the people's mind. They don't think about Libre office Maybe everyone here around thinks about Libre office because we had fast them obviously But all the other people in the world think okay, it's open office and they don't care that it is owned by Oracle So this is the same with fritzing if we would start a fork of fritzing Everyone would just continue to use the former fritzing And there would be we would have to come up with a new name and I think the name is really great So I do not want to come up with a new name So this personally for me is not an option here another idea Would be that I believe maybe It's just necessary to have a maintainer for fritzing Which I can't be because that would take the independence out of fritzing. I do not want to do that but what I Or respect if I slow would do is to just pay half time of a maintainer Because I believe with a maintainer there are developers out there which work for fritzing But they are disappointed by how the project is leached right now So I believe with a maintainer which is really Passionated about fritzing and with some support from our side They could get some traction into this project because then all the developers and there are a few out there would Start working on fritzing again. That is what I believe But totally forget that This this guy also would have to talk to the original fritzing team Which is that's what I can tell kind of hard But at least maybe give it a try So this is open for discussion later after 4 stem I will open up an issue on the fritzing jitter repository with a link to the recording of This talk to give everyone a short idea on what the current situation is Because I do not want to decide it on my own we as a company do not want to decide this on us So it is a question to the community also to find someone who feels responsible for this And I believe for such a great project. There are people who would love to maintain this project Thank you The project So the question is if the reason for The stall is that of the users are not enough developers or out of the users are not enough developers correctly Okay, this is an issue. I see with a lot of projects in this electronic sector because Users are not Developers here. So especially for fritzing. These are really Beginners. There are no software engineers with this or only a small fraction. Yes. This is an issue here Please so the the trademark is owned by the by the public association But that's it. It's just a trademark Does does it answer your question It's it's just it's German it's a German public association Yes So the question is There is this public association which is Democratic so there are people which could come together to make a decision, but the issue is They can't make a decision because they don't just own the brand not everything So it's so fragmented that there is no party which could actually decide for just the whole project Another question over here, please A Fritzing itself is a desktop application. So the question was thank you Javier Who is hosting the website? That's what said it's so fragmented the website is hosted by the limited liability company and the application itself is Qt with C++ obviously so you can always download it but Yeah, that's it So why am I afraid of a fork? Because in two or three years the binaries will just stop working and then everyone moves to the fork Yes, maybe but also maybe the company will just fix the binary that it starts working again Then you have another six years of runtime So that could be an option and the thing is most users are Totally happy with fritzing how it works today. So even thought there are 1,000 issues open most users are just satisfied with this so if for for the for the company behind Fritzing it would be a simple to task to just keep it somehow working But that's not what I see for an open source project. I want to see some involvement Another question here up over there To repeat for the audience on the record The question was why don't we just ask certain because There's up to discussion. He kept wasn't the same situation Why not But then please someone from certain come to me I Will see the LHC electronics done with fritzing Okay, do we have time for another question So So the question is out of these 1,000 issues How many are really important or are people just satisfied with what fritzing does? Yes, most people are satisfied with what's fritzing does and I can't tell you how many of these issues are real bucks Or how many are feature requests because it's not properly sorted What I would do as a maintainer honestly is to take it over and just close all of the issues Just just just fucking throw them away and start off from scratch Because then you can die. No really no one would scope through these 1,000 issues I think you know from your day jobs that when you have a buck tracking with 1,000 open issues You just say okay. This issue is fucking 60 years old. No one really cares about this But this is up to the maintainer And I believe there must be some maintainer behind it with this pragmatic Decision-making here one last question I mean, they don't need to be thrown out completely if they start acting I believe that this company does not really care about fritzing that that's my own opinion Maybe I should repeat the question. So There's money flowing to this company. Why don't we just close the valve and strain that company? I say no, I don't believe that that would help Because this company just don't care. So if there is money coming in that's fine. If not, well, it's that That's my impression of this, but I Hope that someone will when we start off talking on jit up to just interact or maybe give some clear idea on this Okay The question is Have we tried to contact? Not the public association, but the limited liability company We are in contact with them. We have to because we are the fritzing fab and somehow have a relation with them But what I can tell is that it is really really difficult to discuss with them Maybe because there is not a lot of interest to you Further develop it. I Have no clue. All right You