LibreCAD & OSArch
I just had a great chat with Ries today. He's an earlier developer of LibreCAD. He's going to chat with the two main drivers of LibreCAD, Armin (LordOfBikes) and Florian (LC3 lead dev) about maybe a blog post or two, maybe a Monthly Meetup or something. We'll see what happens. Basically @Moult and I have been poking around their forum and chat and talking with them about LibreCAD and how we can support LibreCAD as a solution to the challenge of 2D drafting (with DXF/DWG compatability).
We'll have to see what comes of this but for now LibreCAD have a new release candidate ( ) and a very loved and established 'brand' in the 2D CAD space. Despite this there is a lot of work to do for a project like LibreCAD to be ready for full project documentation and DXF/DWG support. It is borne from a need to make simple 2D CAD files for laser cutters and similar projects.
I hope we also can reach out to Andrew, the developer of QCAD and hear about his vision of how QCAD fits into the free software 2D CAD space. I've been using QCAD Pro on a project at home and it can do a lot. I've asked for some clarification on how/if code moves from the closed to the free version and look forward to a fuller answer ( https://qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=7913 ).
In case anyone is wondering QCAD 3 and LibreCAD 3 are not related.
Comments
Super exciting! Rock on!
I am a bit skeptical about QCAD...
I remember, QCAD Community (the open source version of the original QCAD) was an abandoned code by RibbonSoft, without followers and without any update for many years. Later a group of users took the code and created the current fork LibreCAD. I remember the RibbonSoft's guy was very angry with the LibreCAD project. I don't know why...
LibreCAD is a project with a community of developers who work in collaboration with other communities such as BRL-CAD to improve its project. I don't know if there is a community around the current QCAD project or collaboration with other FLOSS groups. In this sense, QCAD could have part of his code as Open Source, but not sure if this project will keep its development in the future or will stop the FLOSS development to prioritize the closed part. Like it was in the past...
@bitacovir everything you say fits in with the concerns and information I have. Never the less QCAD is a GPLv3 project and it has received some updates.
As you say there is very little community around the project (although the forum is healthy): https://github.com/qcad/qcad/graphs/contributors
If I don't get a response from Andrew on the forum I'll send him an email.