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> building clones is still possible for users but less convenient for companies. That's a pretty charitable way to phrase it. I would think companies looking
by admax88q 5y ago
> building clones is still possible for users but less convenient for companies.
That's a pretty charitable way to phrase it. I would think companies looking to make clones have the expertise and can afford to take the effort to recreate the PCB layouts from the schematics, but normal users are denied the opportunity to learn from it.
It's a small roadblock to commercial clones, but a complex gate to the average user looking to learn.
- hulitu 5y agoAs I said, schematics is all you need. And making your own layout makes you learn. Just copying blindly does not help. And there are a lot of scammers who will take your design and compete with you so let them do some work.
- admax88q 5y agoOh come now, you can't just "learn by doing" when it comes to circuit layout, when you have no idea what will and won't work. Especially with modern high frequency circuits that have a lot more challenges due to cross signaling and propagation delays. Sure copying blindly doesn't help, but neither does shooting int he dark. Having reference layouts that actually work however can be a useful learning resource and starting point to work from if you want to do something similar but slightly different.
- pjmlp 5y agoWhen I was in school doing electronics late 80's, that was the way to go. So 80's high school students were able to do it, but average users are not?
- soco 5y agoThen you surely remember how important layout is for cross signaling, high frequency and and and. All this will be missing from the schematic.
- pjmlp 5y agoNo one said it was an hello world effort.
- admax88q 5y agoWhen I was in high school we wrote our own code. So I guess we can stop doing open source as well right?
- pjmlp 5y agoSo now you turned into a manager and are delegating coding tasks to others? When GPL fades away, the new wave of shareware and public domain will rule again anyway, now we call it copyleft.
- squarefoot 5y agoTrue, however they're not aiming at big industry but cheap asian cloners. Forcing them to hire someone to produce complete layouts would have some impact on the final costs of otherwise very cheap boards.