In addition to what Peter said, GPL says (effectively) that the code is freely available. Fritzing code is free. It is in the publicly available github repository. If you have the tools, skills, time to build it yourself, no donation is needed. GPL does not say that an executable needs to be provided.
Having done this (and documented the procedure in the developers section of the forums) I can tell you it takes at least 3 or 4 man days to get a working development environment to produce a release. An 8 euro donation is a lot cheaper (and much less frustrating) way to do this, but you can do it if you wish … Note as well the donations also support the forums and the web site (bandwidth and servers are not free!). There has been much (largely invisible) work going on to upgrade the forums and web site as they hadn’t had any maintance in around 4 years and were falling apart.
Peter
@vanepp i was just pointing out (or intending to) that complaining about the donation before download due to the code being GPL was not appropriate. The binary download is not “the code”, and the GPL restrictions do not apply to it.
I know and didn’t mean to imply you were incorrect. It has always been the case that is is fine to charge a fee for an installable version of gpl code as long as the code is available to build for your self. I was just pointing out the cost of avoiding the donation. To me I’d rather pay the 8 euros for the binary rather than do a number of days of fairly frustrating work to avoid it. However if you want to contribute to the Fritzing source, you need to do the work anyway, but to only use Fritzing the 8 euros is cheap compared to the time cost of compiling it yourself.
Peter
Exactly. But from the messages seen here, some people do not understand that.
What I like about Fritzing is that user can export gerber codes from design- which are universally accepted by most PC board houses. Initially, when I was researching design software, most affordable downloads produced exports that could only be manufactured by their in house services. Production prices were much higher than generic board houses, which use gerber codes, so you were ‘locked in’ to their network. What if you weren’t happy with that production pricing or product results?
Jim
Thanks for answers in this topic and for clarification.
I am not criticize the idea of paying for the software IMHO this is a saint law of developers who just want to get some benefits from the hard job.
But apart of this I have some opinion regarding this.
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New users. If You already know Fritzing and download the app again You may exactly know what to expect. But assuming You are a new user, paying donation, install the software and You dislike it, what about then? Donation refunding? It may be a point which will scare a new users from try the software.
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Meaning of Donation. According the common definition donation is a gift. So to get precompiled executable I need to give You a present to use the software (made an assumption I’m not a developer and I cannot build the SW from the source). I would like to have a clear view here, If I pay for something to use, let’s name it the buy, price, order sw or something but not using “donation” as payment for something.
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The Donation Distribution. It’s obvious, coffee, time spent on software, giving Your private time to develop program. But this is open source right? There can appear a dev who would like to contribute to it, just single patch or part or whatever, will he/she will get some extra bonus from that? No. IMHO some peoples may be push from contributing anything because there are some people who are getting paid for work on Fritzing and some not. Maybe I’m wrong but this is how I understand it.
I think, this program was created for amateur electronics for educational purpose also. Not for developers who can build the app by Your own. As I said before getting paid for this is Your saint law but please do not name it donation anymore If it’s not a donation 
All the best,
Darek
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Try before you buy is usually for expensive programs, cheap stuff it’s usually pay first, ie, people usually pay for mobile apps before trying them.
It doesn’t say donation on the DL page, but I think the 25 euro is.
FZ was made open in 2016 when the money ran out and not one person wrote code for it, so that model never worked. Basically FZ is unpopular with smart people so never attracts people that can code - it’s like how Mac is not popular against Win -. FZ is pretty much condemned by most, and it’s only a few enthusiasts that keep it going, so it’s either pay, or FZ goes in the bin - last year FZ broke and was already in the bin -. It’s not like the pay system is making much money anyway, I think it only employs 1 coder.
If you don’t need the BB view there are much better programs, but if you do you have no choice because no other EDA has a circuit design breadboard view - you can actually just draw a circuit in Inkscape if you only need BB view -.
It just depends on your needs-
I downloaded V9.3.32 in 2016 because I needed a PC board quick for a contract job. FZ seemed the easiest and fastest to become useful- and it was… I met promised timelines. That project grew, subsequently turned into a rather hi density, complex 4" square board (pic below).
Also looked at PCB123- it has more features, but decided against because of the learning curve needed. Also, at that time, it required proprietary manufacturing, as I said before. Now I see they’ve added gerber file exports, but there’s a catch (note 1) on website which could mean a lot of things.
I’m not dissing PCB123- If I was looking to go into the board designing business, I would spend the time to learn it. It IS a powerful software.
Jim
I haven’t heard of PCB123 so don’t know about it, but I think everyone has gone to KiCad.
Everyone used to use Eagle so you always used to see Eagle download links, but because it’s only 2 layer and 100x80mm everyone went to free KC. I started KC at the same time as FZ and it wasn’t very good - I liked Eagle better -, but now KC is quite good, ie, it now has FZ features, plus every part must be certified by KC before it goes in the program. These days you don’t really have a choice but to install KC, because it’s so wide spread you can’t view anyone else’s stuff without it.
Been going through this post, a bit surprised also it became paying but I’m fundamentally OK with that, I sometimes pay Youtube content makers, wikipedia and software foundations, but I didn’t find the answer to a rather simple question, will we have to pay for every release ?
The current intent is for a donation once a year (which at current rate may be every release, although we may get faster with experience.) You are always welcome to build from source for no fee, the code is available on github, but having done so I can assure you the donation is much cheaper if you value your time.
Peter
Hi Peter, thanks for your reply.
Be assured hat I’m not arguing the value of the work you do, neither the price point you’ve set, yes you’re right, for those to whom Fritzing is usefull (and it is to me), it’s not a lot. You know I’ve been posting free 3D designs for years on Thingiverse, thousands of downloads overall, and not a single €/$ through donations… a bit sad, so I also decided to give it a try and sell a design for a symbolic price (2$) and got 30$ within a month… not much but still enough to buy a good spool of PLA for my printer 
, so I understand you, giving time is nice but a little reward is better
In this case no one much is giving time either. Part of the problem is that the code is very complex (and was created as a paid university research project) so contributing is difficult, but the fact remains almost no one (usually including me although I have a couple of fixes in 0.9.4) contributes code. The pay wall is being used to fund paid professional developers to keep Fritzing alive. After a 4 year gap new releases are now being made which speaks for itself.
Peter
I am a fairly new user and would say that my usage is very low and will always be very low.
I paid the donation, which is less than a beer these days, built a prototype board and got the board printed online. The support forum has been great and Peter has responded each time to requests for parts. In my experience this is a very small price to pay for a great piece of software that has delivered well. I am primarily a windows/web software developer and happy to help at this level of payment/donation towards the development.
If there was a cost, for instance a monthly subscription, it would probably not be worth it for me and I suspect if users are not using it every day in their day job, that would be a huge barrier and I don’t think downloadable apps should be on subscription for users who don’t use it all the time.
I think the small donation up front is more than reasonable in this case, an by no means a barrier.
I don’t know what the alternatives are and the costs for those? would be interested to hear some feedback on that.
Fritzing is opensource, and all code is on github
If you don’t know how github works, I recommend navigating and learning the importance of a community based repository/development platform.
the releases are also available there. If you know what that means, that kind-of makes this whole thread null-and-void. Just an FYI.
All the infrastructure you see from a front-end stand-point is based on convenience, maintenance/upkeep/development. As the last time I checked website(s) are not free.
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Not a great start for my mandatory ‘donation’. My breadboard design is a very simple one; 2 main components only, but Fritzing does not appear to have either of them . . . 
They are Arduino Pro Micro (Clone) (5v), and BME380 sensor - there is a version of the sensor but the layout is all wrong.
The current core parts include:
Arduino Micro (rev 3)
Arduino Mini (rev 5)
Arduino Pro Mini (rev 13)
Arduino Pro Mini (rev 14)
I am not familiar with a pro micro. Which one of the existing parts is closest? If it is none of them, then if you actually ASK, and supply enough details so we can tell what you are talking about, someone may have already created what you want. Or be willing to modify one of the existing parts to match. There are extensive libraries of parts that are not built into the core.
Same for the sensor. I will guess that is a breakout board of some sort. Details are needed so that we can make suggestions.
There is a (apparently not working and not fixed) part for the Arduino Pro Micro here:
It is possible that a Pro mini part (which exists in core parts) may have the same pin out. A google search for BME380 sensor doesn’t turn up much of anything so a web site of the board you want would likely help. There are various versions of the bmp 280 part around. In general a google search of the form “fritzing part Arduino Pro Micro” or “fritzing part BME380 sensor” is a good place to start (although neither are particularly successful in this case possibly due to insufficient information.)
Peter
Don’t call it then open source software