Title:
Engineering, Open Sourced.
Abstract:
Free and open source software has dominated the technology sector across many domains, yet traditional engineering disciplines have proven a difficult environment in which open source has struggled to thrive. This is slowly changing as traditional engineering software grows increasingly expensive and new engineering technologies are quickly adopted in the open source world. This presentation will explore the technical and social value for adopting open source technology in traditional engineering workflows, the immediate challenges to adoption, and the importance of engineering professionals’ active participation in the development of free and open source engineering applications. Special attention will be given to the FreeCAD project, its uniqueness as an open source engineering tool, how it is rapidly evolving, and how it may become a powerful alternative for a world dominated entirely by expensive proprietary software.