Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

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user1234
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by user1234 »

What is about the legal rights from FPA to FreeCAD. Does it somehow across? Just programming is one point, merging and merging rights and what to merge is an other thing.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer,b ut this is as i am understood this.

As to compare, i can not mowing the grassland from the neighbor, even when the time for mowing. As far as i know at the moment every contributor convey the all rights form written code to the FPA and what is to merge is the decision of the maintainers form the FPA (or passed by them). When you are in the FPA, is that a kind of conflict of interest, at least in a legal way? I did not want you to irritate, but this is at least in my nation a very touchy issue.


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adrianinsaval
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by adrianinsaval »

sliptonic wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 12:04 am Of course, we'll have to have a product. The business will have to be sustainable eventually. We're just not rushing to say what that is because, to be honest, we don't know yet. It will probably have a lot to do with collaboration and cloud execution and I'm counting on smart engineers to help figure that out.
I think there is also a market for training which I believe can be achieved in the short term, IIRC the people at openfoam get part of their funding with this, granted that's a software that probably has a much bigger need for training.
user1234 wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 2:03 am As far as i know at the moment every contributor convey the all rights form written code to the FPA
not at all, the author retains the copyright to their code by default, one can choose to concede those right to the FPA but I haven't seen anyone doing it. This is free software that is meant to remain free so copyright holders don't matter much, except for preventing it from ever going privative.
and what is to merge is the decision of the maintainers form the FPA (or passed by them)
not exactly, what is to be merged is a decision of the maintainers, not all of them are FPA members, wmayer as notorious example.
When you are in the FPA, is that a kind of conflict of interest
That is a good question, I think sliptonic has maintainer access to the repo, so in theory he could unilaterally decide to merge anything his company produces... in practice he'll probably get kicked out in a minute and unwanted changes reverted if he abused his position as maintainer, it would also be a reputation suicide for himself and the company so I don't have much fear. It would be important for the community to watch out for unwanted merges though.
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sliptonic
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by sliptonic »

user1234 wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 2:03 am When you are in the FPA, is that a kind of conflict of interest, at least in a legal way? I did not want you to irritate, but this is at least in my nation a very touchy issue.
This is something I was/am concerned about, especially since I'm in the administrative group. AFAIK, there's no conflict of interest at this time. But I don't want even the appearance of a conflict. In the lead-up to the launch, I raised the issue with the FPA admin and also at a zoom meeting that all FPA was invited to. If the FPA ever thinks it is an issue, I'll step out of an admin role in an instant.

There should be much less concern with me/Ondsel being general members of the FPA. In fact, the FPA general membership should expand to represent as many perspectives as possible. It would be great if we could get more business, academic, and government voices.

As far as being a maintainer and having merge authority goes, that also shouldn't be an issue. We have a policy for contributions and maintainers. I'll continue to be maintainer of the Path workbench for now, until someone else wants to lead it. If there's ever an abuse of merge authority, the same rules apply to me as anyone else.
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by chrisb »

I think it was a good move to ask the FPA members in advance, just to be transparent. From the way sliptonic acted in the past, I have no doubt that he will use his powers in a not only responsible way but also to bring the FreeCAD side forward.

It is very important to be transparent here, so that the FPA as a whole can act if it ever becomes necessary. If anyone - not only an FPA member - would ever observe abuse, the FPA will react appropriately and again transparently.
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by keithsloan52 »

Hi Brad

Are you aware that a Japanese Professor, Hiroshi Okuda is due to give a presentation at the FreeCAD and FreeCAE conference this coming March. see https://hopin.com/events/freecad-and-fr ... gistration. He is the developer/creator of FontISTR see https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hiroshi-Okuda.

They have a FreeCAD workbench which you are probably aware of https://wiki.freecadweb.org/FEM_FrontISTR_Workbench. It uses/exploits GPU's. Now I suspect that there are a lot of smaller Engineering firms that have not yet invested in GPU's. Might be worth research if OmdSel could offerNon-Linear FEM analysis says based on https://aws.amazon.com/nvidia/ or Azure.

Just make sure you have a good lawyer as you don't want to get sued if a service you are offering gets hacked (not your fault) and a small Engineering company is not happy their confidential design got leaked.

Just a thought - Keith
Last edited by keithsloan52 on Thu Jan 26, 2023 4:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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sliptonic
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by sliptonic »

keithsloan52 wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 3:05 pm Are you aware...
I was aware of the conference but not this talk. This is very interesting stuff! Very interesting possibilities indeed.

Let's not talk about legal stuff. I have enough keeping me awake at night as it is. :lol:
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by adrianinsaval »

you could also think of partnering with cfd.direct or simscale.com to integrate their services into freecad with the cfdof addon or something like that. Maybe simscale could have native support for fcstd files

it seems cfd direct already includes freecad in their cloud service: https://cfd.direct/cloud/
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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by user1234 »

@adrianinsaval, thanks for clarifying.

sliptonic wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:10 pm This is something I was/am concerned about, especially since I'm in the administrative group. AFAIK, there's no conflict of interest at this time. But I don't want even the appearance of a conflict. In the lead-up to the launch, I raised the issue with the FPA admin and also at a zoom meeting that all FPA was invited to. If the FPA ever thinks it is an issue, I'll step out of an admin role in an instant.

I have no issues with you, for me you are a person with absolute integrity. But other peoples and legal things does not care about how upright (or in right) you are, it is about clause and article. If someone have something against you, or just need money, you should not have any points of attack, since they use all absolutely shameless. Believe me, i wrote this by experience.



sliptonic wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:10 pm It would be great if we could get more business, academic, and government voices.
Business? What FreeCAD need for business is a PDM/PLC, more then anything else. You can do pretty anything right now with FreeCAD (yes even assembly without a dedicated wb, links work great), but not managing (norm parts, datasheets, revisions, versions, properties, forks .....) your parts. For a company with 3+ CAD technician (of course it depends on the division they work), it pays. Even you set up for companies a PDM/PLC and they maintain it by self, you have work for a lifetime, several if you life long enough. To compare in a similar but other usecase, ERP system Tryton, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryton. Also FOSS, but they set it up for others and also make the maintenance.

Ideally then you can connect the a FreeCAD PDM/PLC with any ERP, maybe even with Tryton, since it is also FOSS.


Just said, when my company is big enough, i would not hesitate to do that asap.

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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by grd »

user1234 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 5:45 am What FreeCAD need for business is a PDM/PLC, more then anything else.
FreePDM? https://github.com/grd/FreePDM

I know, it's still not fully working, but you can help if you want to.

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Re: Announcing Ondsel - An open-core company building around FreeCAD

Post by catman »

I too wish you a good start with Ondsel.

Its probably not much help but I'm convinced you are doing the right step at the right time.
Your product description sounds like a good choice to me. You seem to know potential customers in need of such a solution and its technical ambition seems perfect for a new team.

For sure you already started a very interesting discussion about buisness cases with FreeCAD.

sliptonic wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 3:56 pm I have enough keeping me awake at night as it is. :lol:
Thanks for the link to the OCV website. Its a very inspiring but also a bit mind-blowing reading experience.

I can't even begin to imagine what you have been through in the last months looking at these processes. Your head must be full of open-but-soon-to-be-solved issues, indeed. And if thats not difficult enough you're setting up a 100% remote company and are you are targeting a customer base of small, not classical IT-based companies. I guess you're in for quite a roaller coaster ride. :)

My highest respects and may the force stay with you.
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