As mentioned in this thread, one is supposed to search for “paypal” on this site to find the explanation for why Fritzing now requires a donation. The problem is that (to me) this does not produce any links with explanation (yes - I read the 11 threads that show up and none of them seem to explain what’s going on). Most of these just complain about the lack of other payment options.
Given the history of the Fritzing project where all the money people paid was siphoned to someone, but not the developers - there needs to be a proper blog post on the website - not just a Paywall with a small note. The last Blog post is from February 2017 and this makes the project look dead. You really need to clear this up properly, not just assure us “all is good and just pay”. We need to know that the money is ACTUALLY going to the right people and that there is an actual crew behind the project now.
I am a teacher that have had my students use Fritzing to document their assignments. I have always recommended the project since it aligns so closely with how students work with a breadboad (so no need to understand Schematics). I can not ask my students to pay for Fritzing - unless the Fritzing team can take the 15 minutes needed to write up a blog post explaining the current structure, what went wrong and how you are fixing it. I’m really sorry to say this, but I cannot tell my students to pay to someone that just runs with the money (as has happened before). I know there are new hands on deck, but please give us a proper assurance that this is not just another way to take money without doing anything?
I really would love to see Fritzing flourish again!
Update: I have now paid to Fritzing - represented by Kjell Morgenstern. Based on that, I found a video on Youtube with the title " Fritzing - the past, the present and the future Restarting with 1100 technical issues" (I cannot post more than 2 links). This looks promising but I still stand by that an official statement should be made to instill trust. It’s great to see developers align to work on the code, but there is also a need for someone to communicate to the users in other places than github. I’m willing to shoot my foot and say that I can help on getting some outward facing communication going, so PM me if you agree and I can try to get the CMS behind the site going again? (if that’s the problem)
Good info to be found on github. com/fritzing/fritzing-app/issues/3443 More info on the start of the reboot github .com/fritzing/fritzing-app/issues/3435
I second that there needs to be a new post on the blog about the restart of Fritzing and some info about it going forward. And not “sometime”, more like yesterday.
While @KjellM is the official source of information, if you log in and then access the download page there is an option for “I have already donated”. It may be this is intended for reloading the current version (and I’m sure no one would object to another donation ) but it will work for new versions. Donations have always been possible, but in the past something like .1% of the downloaders made a donation and Fritzing can’t survive without income, thus the pay wall. I agree this could be better documented though, I’d suggest that some one write up an explanation of how they think things should work and submit it to @KjellM for approval and posting. I expect we all would rather he spend his time on development rather than writing policy documents (I know at least I would .)
the payment is intended for one user, and to include updates for one year.
That works now, but in 2019, it was difficult to promise anything about the future of the project.
The website was ancient and could not be updated, or even modified. The legal structure was distributed over an inactive non profit, a UG (= Ltd), a GmbH (slightly different kind of Ltd.) with multiple owners who were not active on the project. It was not really what you call job security.
Since summer 2020, the website is on a new stack, and since December 2020, all the different parts of Fritzing have been transferred to Fritzing GmbH, which then was officially transferred to me. With all those issues out of the way, things now move faster. The 0.9.6 release runs much smoother and has significantly lowered the amount of support requests I get. There is still an astonishing number of open issues, but we are getting there.
How long does it take to get the download link I’ve been waiting 3hours now & the paypal receipt came thru to me within 2 minutes but I’m still waiting, your we are waiting for a payment notification has been refreshing but somethings broken I think - it would have been nice to have a support email to contact but this is the only way I can find
I look forward to hearing from some one soon hopefully
Regards
Stephen
If you go to the Fritzing site https://fritzing.org/ and log in then click download there is a button “I have already paid” which should allow a download without a fee.
Thanks for the info I was logged in & the option wasn’t avail until I logged out & back in so I got the option - I’ve still not received a email with a download link tho so thanks I’ve now downloaded it & begun to have an experiment
Hey,
first of all thanks for the update!
I have two small comments:
When I downloaded the Mac version the file suffix was .bz2 and not .dmg. You might want to change this.
Even though I was still able to download the version for free I felt like contributing – but I couldn’t find a Paypal link. Maybe add it to the “contribute” page?
(Yes, I appreciate the effort of the project and the community so I wanted to support it - and 8 Euros is more than appropriate, IMO)
The issue with the .bz2 files is on the client side. I found reports that some browsers had a bug, they simply rename the file from .dmg to .bz2 , because the .dmg file internally indeed uses bz2 to compress the data. I would be very interested to improve this, but it seems to affect few users, and I couldn’t yet reproduce. Also not sure if it is possible to fix this server side.
If you have doubts about a binary, please let me know, I’ll send you a sha256 checksum.
Mac and Windows builds since 0.9.6 are certified and signed to Fritzing GmbH . No tricks to work around Windows Defender or hidden keyboard combinations on Mac (as it was with earlier versions) required.
Hey,
No need for the checksum, after I found the mention that it is a .dmg I renamed it and everything was fine. Just wanted you to let know. - I used Chrome.
(Maybe mention the possibility next to the link for others…)
) but it will work for new versions. Donations have always been possible, but in the past something like .1% of the downloaders made a donation and Fritzing can’t survive without income, thus the pay wall. I agree this could be better documented though, I’d suggest that some one write up an explanation of how they think things should work and submit it to 