Reaction to the new QCAD Community Edition

Hello LibreCAD Team,

a few days ago i read in this article (http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/qcad-community-edition-is-back-on-track) that a new version of QCAD Community Edition has been released.

My question is whether you have already had a look at the code of this new release and maybe already have ideas on how it could be beneficial to LibreCAD?

As the license of this new Community Edition is GPL v3+ it can obviously not be used together with code from the old Community Edition that is GPL v2-only. But maybe the Improvements of LibreCAD could be ported to the new Community Edition Code which could serve as a new base for LibreCAD. That way once the conversion is done LibreCAD would also (license wise) be ready to integrate LibreDWG directly.
This would be especially cool as LibreDWG is going to receive some improvements during this years GSOC. (http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2013/avneet/62002) and (http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2013/gaganjyot/29001).

Do you think such a replacement of GPL v2 components in LibreCAD with GPL v3+ components from the new Community Edition is feasible?

Anyways I am looking forward to great developments in LibreCAD.

cheers, to-b

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 8:09 PM, to-b [via LibreCAD]
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hello LibreCAD Team,
>
> a few days ago i read in this article
> (http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/qcad-community-edition-is-back-on-track)
> that a new version of QCAD Community Edition has been released.
>
> My question is whether you have already had a look at the code of this new
> release and maybe already have some plans to on how it could be beneficial
> to LibreCAD?

I think it's pretty cool that Andrew released a GPL version of QCAD 3
- i'll have to check it out. As for returning code, our patches are
GPL-2+ on top of his original code which is GPL-2, so the new GPL-3+
QCAD should be able to legally work with them [1]. LibreCAD,
obviously, can't take legally any of QCAD3s changes. I don't know if
the large-scale changes between the two code bases are prohibitively
difficult (at least with the time the current devs give to the
project). I think the biggest incompatibility (and what caused the
LibreCAD fork in the first place) is between the two development
models. Andrew has the responsibility of maintaining a commercial
product, he needs be overly cautious about large scale changes to the
code base that he in the end would be (financially) responsible to
maintain. He also has to keep QCAD CE and commercial somewhat on the
same code base, so accepting too many patches may lead to a fork
between QCAD CE and commercial. LibreCAD, on the other hand, has
historically been more open to community patches since there was no
other branch to be concerned about. In the past, patches and new
feature implementations languished on the QCAD forums for years
without comment, which lead to people trying it on their own forks. A
bunch of those forks and patches eventually merged with the work on a
CAM processor, which ended up as LibreCAD.

So before the two projects can merge together, we'd need to see how
"community" based the new QCAD CE is. But overall, it's a good thing
that it was released and I appreciate the work.

~Scott

[1] For completeness: when our GPL-2+ patches are applied to the GPL-2
code, the whole blob becomes GPL-2. We did this in case we ended up
totally rewriting everything it would be easier to transfer the whole
project to GPL-2+.

Dear LibreCAD Community,

QCAD 3 also accepts contributions from the community. There is no release delay anymore between the QCAD 3.x Community Edition and QCAD Professional 3.x.

Code contributions are accepted under GPLv3+ with license exceptions which make GPL less limiting, see https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/master/gpl-3.0-exceptions.txt. I see a lot of potential for unnecessary duplicate efforts here without any benefits for users or developers.

Scripting and Plugins

QCAD 3 comes with a very powerful and complete JavaScript interface which offers access to the complete Qt and QCAD API and can be used to create new tools in no time, without any additional tools such as a compiler or IDE. QCAD 3 also has a complete C++ plugin interface for add-ons that depend on C/C++ libraries.

Documentation

A complete user reference manual is available online for free in German and English (Menu Help - Browser User Manual), a comprehensive book / e-book is available for purchase.

Most Notable New Features and Improvements

Under the hood, QCAD 3 has a much improved, transaction based architecture and uses a spatial index for fast entity lookups. Towards the user interface, interaction is now scene / view based. Multiple scenes can be attached to a document to display multiple synchronized views.

Support for TrueType fonts has been added, the new property editor has become an indispensable tool for most QCAD users and performance has improved greatly in some areas. We also have a new library browser with RDF support, search based in tags and much more. For power users there is an optional, very affordable proprietary plugin for excellent DXF and DWG support up to version 2013 (based on Teigha).

QCAD 3 has been proven in the year since its release to be very stable on all supported platforms.

Of course you can choose to continue to fork and duplicate but IMHO, there's simply no reason to fork QCAD 3.

For those who are new to QCAD 3, you can find brief download and build instructions in our forum at:
http://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2424

From the lead developer of QCAD 3,
Andrew Mustun

Hi Andrew,
First, congratulations for your new version.

I've looked at this file:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
and seems all used licenses are GPL or LGPL in version 2 or 3 except cxf files that remain closed licensed.

this prevents to distribute QCAD in most distributions forcing to make a fork

Cheers,
Rallaz

Dear LibreCAD Community,


From the lead developer of QCAD 3,
Andrew Mustun

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NAML

add requirements into README.mod or install.txt

Error log (Ubuntu 12.04)

../../generated_cpp/com_trolltech_qt_phonon/qtscript_AbstractAddon.cpp:8:28: фатальная ошибка: addoninterface.h: No such file or directory
compilation aborted.
../../generated_cpp/com_trolltech_qt_phonon/qtscript_AbstractAudioOutput.cpp:8:33: фатальная ошибка: abstractaudiooutput.h: No such file or directory
compilation aborted.
make[6]: *** [release/qtscript_AbstractAddon.o] Error 1
make[6]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs ...


Sergey Khoteev aka Valber

Thanks for pointing that out Rallaz. I've updated the LICENSE.txt file accordingly ('Hershey' fonts may be distributed under the 'kind of public domain' license terms in fonts/hershey.readme. All other fonts are public domain):
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

Rallaz - can you expand upon why you think that licence text makes the software not DFSG-free, and thus non-distributable in, for example, Debian.

That licence text, and the GPL 3 exception text look fine to me. Obviously any proprietary scripts and plugins would need to be removed from a Debian version, but unless these are really vital that should be OK and does not comprise a fork.

Is the problem that the fonts used are non-free (the .cxf files you mention). I guess a program with no text isn't much use. But drop-in replacements for the fonts (and icons?) (using what was done for QCAD 2, I presume) doesn't constitute a fork, and should be easy to keep in sync and share code.

Or am I missing something?

Anyway, great news about QCAD3 and the possibility of integrating libreDWG. I look forward to trying it.

Sergey, I've put together some compilation instructions with dependencies that are known to work. Other combinations might also work. In particular the Qt configuration is crucial for Linux builds:
http://www.qcad.org/en/component/content/article/78-qcad/111-qcad-compilation-from-sources

I will also release packages with binaries as soon as I have a chance.

Wookey, any existing proprietary scripts or plugins are optional. Any future proprietary scripts or plugins will also be optional - I cannot see a case in which they would not be since the QCAD 3.1 is a full featured 2D CAD system at this point.

I guess for the icons and documentation (see doc directores in scripts, e.g. scripts/Block/AddBlock/doc), the GPL probably does not make much sense. None of the files in ./scripts are compiled in. These are runtime resources. I guess the best license for them is "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported". I hope that makes sense.

I am pretty curious, but I'm not a programmer, could someone compile for windows?
See ya!
Cla

Hi Rallaz,

I feel there's no reason for us not to support Qt native fonts. We will keep the stick fonts by lff, but allow any native fonts provided by Qt.

What's your idea here?

We have the efficiency when user is not required to use stick font features.

Also, I'm wondering whether we can further simplify the current LFF implementation to support full WenQuanYi utf-8 fonts.

Thanks,

dxli
 

Rallaz wrote

Hi Andrew,
First, congratulations for your new version.

I've looked at this file:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
and seems all used licenses are GPL or LGPL in version 2 or 3 except cxf files that remain closed licensed.

this prevents to distribute QCAD in most distributions forcing to make a fork

Cheers,
Rallaz

Nice to hear that a new QCAD Community Edition was release.
Many thanks.

In my oppinion LibreCAD/CADuntu started as a QCAD2 fork and evolved into an independent open source CAD drawing tool.
So it has not much to do with the newest versions of QCAD2+ (besides the GUI alignment/usage which is looks still the same). I think it is would be nice if both projects could benefit from each other but still beeing independent of each other.
That's only my opinion and does not reflect the opnion of the community or the devs.

CONTENTS DELETED

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Hey [via LibreCAD]
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> QCAD 3 Community release - good news, yes for some.

What is the size of community of QCAD?

BTW, is there any community of QCAD?

> LibreCAD - for poor people in poor countries is better, because long term
> LibreCAD will have eventually the same or better features but for free, it
> may take longer but all good things is worth waiting for.

:-)

--
H.S.Rai

I like your view of things.  I am writing functions for Land Surveying/Civil Engineering that should be very useful in many situations.

I heard for Ries that there is a community in Africa using LibreCAD for land subdividing of their lands.

I am an intermediate programmer, so if you see a post from me and have knowledge of my problem, your insights would be appreciated.

I look forward to working on LibreCAD.

Thanks,

Best Wishes.
Joe O'Connor
Professional Survey/Mapper

Claus, official QCAD binaries for all platforms are now available from QCAD.org. The free packages in the download section contain the complete QCAD application under GPLv3. Trial versions of some proprietary plugins are also included - these can be easily removed if desired.

Nice to know Andrew!
Thanks!
Cla

Well, after reading posts in this forum I now begin to understand the history of where LibreCAD came from. I see that it was forked a while ago and has developed into what it is now.
I also understand the good reasons for doing this to help keep it open source and so on, but I have to be completely honest here - I don't see the point of it anymore now that QCAD is again open source!
Sure I know that there is a small price to pay if you want to use a certain add-on - but hey we all need to earn a living.
Without using the add-ons the free version of QCAD is more than good enough for my needs and the option to contribute to the development is just a bonus, whats more the manual is there too.
I commend the efforts made to this project but...and I know this is just my opinion here - I don't see the point of re-inventing the wheel!

Is some where ready to use binary of QCAD 3 CE?
Want to try on Win32!

Eugen F. wrote

Is some where ready to use binary of QCAD 3 CE?
Want to try on Win32!

Sure, have a look here:
http://www.qcad.org/en/qcad-downloads-trial