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Comment by Accujack | Hacker News Reader

No. A free software CAD/CAM package has been desired for a long time, and no one has ever written something that competes with commercial packages except in token form.

To create a quality 3D CAD/CAM program takes more than just competence and interest in having a free product. It takes a small core of very talented people with expertise and experience in building complex software, surrounded by a legion of supporters. Kind of like the Linux kernel project.

It's a niche software product that requires significant technical expertise in programming, mathematics, and in UI design. It's nitpicking to debug.

The closest anyone has built is Blender, but that's still a far cry from being Fusion 360 or Solidworks.

GNU has had a CAD program on their wish list for as long as I can remember... going back to 1990 or before.

Unfortunately, the removal of local simulation is more of the same from Autodesk.

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The way that big FOSS apps succeed is either by...

1. Catering to the needs of developers, such that the user community is also the development community.

2. Bootstrapping off of hobbyist users and crowdfunding to keep developers on board.

The second option is how Blender happened. It started out as an in-house tool at NeoGeo[0], then got sold as a proprietary shareware app by NaN Software, which went bankrupt. The fact that it was shareware meant they had a large hobbyist fanbase - it was very cheap compared to professional tools. So people were willing to crowdfund it; they were able to buy the software copyright off of NaN's creditors; and that enthusiasm continued for multiple decades until it became the massive behemoth that it is today.

For us to get a FOSS CAD app we need hobbyist buy-in. That's arguably a far smaller audience than hobbyist CG artists. And even then we have to compete with the free tiers on modern subscription apps. Blender's only competition back in the day was pirating Maya; but FreeCAD and friends have to compete with the cut-down hobbyist license on Fusion 360.

[0] No, not that one

The 3D-printing crowd might be something though, it's getting very popular lately. They are often into open source and creating things so if you get them annoyed enough, there might be a competing product in the works :-)

Wow, that's really awesome. How much was the copyright, out of curiosity?

If I remember correctly somewhere around 100,000 euros.

Thanks for the footnote =D

Sadly, most a acceptable large consumer open source software related to a domain vertical has been basically the result of a commercial closed source company open sourcing effort before going under. Like open/libre office, blender, among others that escape me now.

The problem with Open source is that although developers are willing to share their time and skills for free, most other professionals just won't do it.

Say funding is a given, how do you attract the talent?

Pay them better than anyone else can.

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