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Petition to open the Parasolid kernel source code
michael_zeagler
Member Posts: 118 ✭✭✭
I made it for kicks and think it would be really cool, but the CAD world is its own animal. It seems like the parasolid kernel is one of the most common pieces of software out there but it's all boxed up in stuff that's licensed for industry. I try to use a parasolid export basically anywhere but "real" CAD software and it's a total bust. It's not in something like Prusa slicer/Cura, let alone something like this academic project:
https://humanshape.org/index.html#models
I don't have a clue as to how much cash Siemens must be raking in on this whole thing, but based on talks like this one on youtube it seems like the kind of operation that gets done in cooperation with industry at large anyway. It seems like it could totally work under the model of the Linux foundation where the major benefactors, not to mention contributors, are basically customers like AWS and Google.
Comments
This is a nice idea, but considering that Siemens won't even share the documentation for the Parasolid APIs publicly (licensees sign agreements to keep this under NDA), it seems unlikely that they will change their mind any time soon.
Nice ideas that no one will like are my bread and butter.
What would be the offer for Siemens? They invested probably millions/(billions?) into Parasolid, it is a very valuable asset.
The probability that the reaction to "3(+x) people from chng.it have signed a petition that they want it for free" is "brilliant, why haven't we thought of that before!" is exactly zero.
So I guess you won't be one of the signatures then.
In general it would be brilliant to have an open source alternative at the level of Parasolid. I just think that wanting it is not enough. E.g. Blender was bought off from the original owners by the community to be "freed". Perhaps there could be an offer where Siemens would actually agree. I think the sum would be very high and need a lot more enthusiasts than we needed for the Blender buy-out back then. But who knows?
In any case - good luck!