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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

So ... if manufacturers don't do this, then what we need is a way to allow a community to contribute this kind of information.

Like a GitHub for electronic models, and related data.

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Engineers can contribute their own models on SnapEDA. They are then available to download in all formats. However, for quality reasons, we create the vast majority of models.

Sounds good, but how open is this? Is it like GitHub, where source code is owned by the authors/community (and not by GitHub), or is everything you upload owned by SnapEDA?

Also, can other toolmakers openly access these libraries?

Everything uploaded is licensed under the Creative Commons with Design Exception upon download. This means engineers need to credit the source/author when reposting the content online, but as soon as it's integrated into a design it becomes the downloader's IP. This way, if you're working at a big company, you can license the product under the terms of your choosing.

That’s the last thing I’d trust, Joe Public creating device models. Leave that to the device modeling groups at the semiconductor companies.

We understand this concern which is why we build the vast majority of content.

We also work with component manufacturers to help them create or translate their content to various formats. Here's an example: https://www.snapeda.com/parts/4N32-X001/Vishay/view-part/.

User-generated content is supported due to popular demand, but we deprioritize it in favor of semiconductor-generated, or SnapEDA-generated content. We also have an automated verification checker that exposes the quality of UGC on each part page.

I’m talking about semiconductor models, not footprints or 3D CAD models.

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