> electronic design engineers rarely have the software skills required to develop EDA software.
You could say that about many other fields too, but then why do we have great tools like Blender, Krita, Audacity, etc.? Artists and musicians have great software skills, but electronics engineers don't? There's always been a huge overlap between EE and CS degrees, with "computer engineering" degrees coming about as a merger of the two fields decades ago, so I find this statement hard to believe.
Just a guess, but it could be because the size of EE employers is bimodal. Either you're working for a startup that can't afford to sponsor open source development and would not benefit in time for it to change the chance of success, or you're working for a huge company, big enough to negotiate discounts from the vendors.
> working for a huge company, big enough to negotiate discounts from the vendors.
Google tells me the average salary for a Mechanical Engineer is $95,675/year.
The cost of a single-user SolidWorks Standard license is $2,820/year [1]
You don't need to get big and negotiate a discount - if the engineer says they're 3% more efficient using SolidWorks, it'll pay for itself at list price.
$95k/year is lower middle-class these days in America, and probably strugging to pay the bills in many areas due to ridiculous CoL.
Sure, the company might not blink an eye at spending $2820 on a software license for the engineer to use at work, but the engineer himself probably isn't going to be able to fit that into his own budget if he wants to work on any personal mechanical projects at home.
That's a very interesting question and I'm not really sure what the answer is in general but I can answer for myself.
I'm an EE. I can code. I think I'm pretty good at it. But there's a reason I didn't major in CS, I don't enjoy it all that much and I don't do it as a hobby either.
If you believe that those who contribute to FOSS is a small percentage, then I think for non-SW folks you're looking at a small percentage of a small percentage, which means sparingly few contributors which means sparingly few FOSS EDA tools.
Well, Blender, at least started as commercial software. It was only open sourced after the foundation was put together to hit the source code out of the bankruptcy.
Yes, but Blender at that point was very primitive, both from a features and usability standpoint.
What really drove Blender forward in its earlier years were the open movie projects, both as a way of raising funds for development and as a way of putting the software through its paces to find spots that need improvement. Ton Roosendal has been a superbly skillful project leader in other ways too, like finding the right technical areas and features to focus on, putting the needs of the artists/users first, knowing when to set aside his own vision in favor of what the community wants and not undertaking major rewrites until there is enough momentum behind the project to see them through.
That's a long way in the past though, and one of the fascinating things about the Blender project is the way that they have been able to break with their legacy in a way that other projects seem incapable of. Modern Blender is a very different experience to the early iterations.
You could say that about many other fields too, but then why do we have great tools like Blender, Krita, Audacity, etc.? Artists and musicians have great software skills, but electronics engineers don't? There's always been a huge overlap between EE and CS degrees, with "computer engineering" degrees coming about as a merger of the two fields decades ago, so I find this statement hard to believe.