Discussion: FreeCAD is not ready for 1.0

[triplus]

Yes, development will still happen, but as long as there are no solid plans or timetables no decision can be made.

But the thing is, you and some other people are calming, all of this doesn't exists, and at the same time, when sharing your personal opinions, they more or less do align, with the other people opinions. People having expressed some rational expectations in this thread, on what FreeCAD 1.0 development cycle should be all about:

You see, I am mentioning realistic goals and scenarios (topological naming, assembly, testing), not just whatever comes to my mind.

It was explained in this thread, on a numerous occasions, the next development cycle will be all about that, and more. Therefore the way i see it, you opened this thread, due to having some additional questions and concerns, and that should be settled now?

[vocx]

It was explained in this thread, on a numerous occasions, the next development cycle will be all about that, and more. Therefore the way i see it, you opened this thread, due to having some additional questions and concerns, and that should be settled now?

You make absolutely no sense, triplus. It's like you just don't get it.

It is not just about adding new shiny things to the software, it is about having a stable procedure for testing and moving forward with well thought out steps. Again, it's not just, "it will happen", but how it will happen, and how it will affect different parts of the software. If you just add a bunch of new stuff, that doesn't guarantee it will work correctly. You need time to make sure everything works well.

[adrianinsaval]

For reference:

Thanks for the primer on FreeCAD development. As far as the "early state" of development comment goes that was an assumption on my part of where FreeCAD is at based on its version number. It's an extremely impressive application and my hat is off to all the developers involved and the community of supporters on this forum.

Current version number is misleading.

[triplus]

@vocx

I can agree with that and hopefully people participating in this thread will be prepared to do some TopoNaming testing in the future.

[chrisb]

I can agree with that and hopefully people participating in this thread will be prepared to do some TopoNaming testing in the future.

We are waiting years for this to come. It sure will be used - and thus tested - with high intensity.

[triplus]

In addition to agreeing, on what FreeCAD 1.0 development cycle should be about, and recognizing it aligns with the next development cycle, the agreement on time frame needed to achieve it is nearing too:

https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-Enha ... als/pull/6

That is, it is realistic to expect, for the next development cycle to take around 2 years. And likely we are still a couple of months away, from FreeCAD 0.19 release. All in all summer takes priority.

What i am trying to say is a lack of agreement for sure isn't standing in the way of entering FreeCAD 1.0 era. All, have a nice summer and i guess an exciting autumn ahead!

[kkremitzki]

Quoting Zolko from another thread, who has articulated a criterion for the 1.0 release that I haven't seen mentioned quite as often:

I think that's the most important issue to do to 1.0: what is the decision process at FreeCAD ? If the mantra continues to be "it's done when it's done" then that excludes 1.0 for me. Whatever the features. If, on the other hand, an official body exists, with transparent decision-making process, then the technical hurdles can be overcome.

I – and I think all professional engineers will feel the same – cannot invest a big project on a tool decided by unknown people on their whim. It's as simple as that, all the rest is poetry. It won't prevent FreeCAD to be a nice tool for hobby designers of course, but it will not compete with commercial products, even if though it's free.

To me, this is an even better requirement than the one I had been fine with, "mainline assembly".

[chrisb]

I think Zolko is wrong here. I would rather than relying on known people and their whim on something where I have validated that it meets my requirements plus I have the source code available just in case.

[wmayer]

I – and I think all professional engineers will feel the same – cannot invest a big project on a tool decided by unknown people on their whim

And do engineers know personally the people behind a commercial CAD system and the roadmap of it? I don't think so.

Another point -- as several times discussed in the forum -- is the vendor lock-in and that more and more commercial CAD systems follow the SaaS model where clients lose control over their own data and are forced to have a service contract. This is the big advantage of FreeCAD where clients have the certainty that this won't happen. Some forum members already reported that their clients want to or have moved to FreeCAD for exact this reason.

If the mantra continues to be "it's done when it's done" then that excludes 1.0 for me.

This is the mantra of most other OSS projects too and as long as it's based on the work on volunteers who spend their spare time nobody can force them to implement certain features or finish something in a certain time -- not even the project maintainers.
If commercial clients have interest in certain features then they have the possibility to directly pay a developer to implement it.

[chrisb]

If the mantra continues to be "it's done when it's done" then that excludes 1.0 for me.

Finally it is not very different with commercial systems, but of course they cannot use it as their mantra. I have seen it more often than I can tell that a ticket with an error or a feature request was assigned to a certain release, but either the release had to be postponed or the ticket was moved due to other priorities to the next release after - and to the next - and to the next. It even seems that the probability increases that a ticket is moved if it was moved before.