I dont’ find a direct download link (i don’t have money to donate yet, i’m form a poor country and the euro is so expensive) for the application neither instructions build for windows.
At least put a zipped version like before or detailed instruction for compiling it from the source for windows (all of us don’t have the same knowledge like you).
I understand that you need to keep the project sustentable but there are other forms to get money (some projects upload a charged version on windows store that update to latest automatically).
But, if you will charge and put difficulties (many of us must install and reinstall software many times) to use your software on other OS, at least don’t use the term, “gnu” “open source” or “electronic made easy”.
And github repository is censoring this topic and not offering answers
If you post the details of the compile failure I’ll try and trouble shoot. I haven’t built the current version from source lately so the instructions may no longer be correct (they are from a couple of years ago on version 0.9.3b) and the latest release uses a totally new tool chain. We tried the voluntary donation route (and considered what other options are available) but somewhere around 0.01% of people downloading donated, and Fritzing basically died. The current scheme has seen a new release (0.9.4) and (mostly invisible) upgrades to the infrastructure in the form of upgrades to the web site and the forum software (both of which had no maintance for 4 years or more) so it is working. Until someone comes up with another way to fund Fritzing it looks to be the only way forward. Fritzing is still open source, the source is GPLed and available and you can build it for yourself (it isn’t anywhere near easy, but it is possible because I have done it.)
Thanks a lot Peter for jumping in. The public github repository is a strange place to demand a software should not be called open source… directly next to the published source files. I didn’t censor or ban the user, I just closed this issue. Greetings from my homeoffice, working on Fritzing in isolation long hours.
As i told you there are no clear instructions for compile (and all of us don’t have the same knowledge like you).
Also I understand that you need to keep the project sustentable but there are other forms to get money (some projects upload a charged version on windows store that update to latest automatically), like WinSCP where they charge the software from the windows store but don’t make a pay wall disguised as “donation”.
Many of us are from third world countries and our currency are in the ground, believe me if i wish to donate to you.
I just realized you may be looking at the instructions on the development Wiki (which are not very clear.) Have you looked at this forum post?
notedop has updated my original instructions for 0.9.3b for the latest release. This is as clear as instructions get (which I will admit is not all that clear,) this is a complex installation, a typical Qt install takes me around 8 hours of downloading (often multiple times at 8 hours each, when I forget to do something) then you need libgit2 (which took me a long time to figure out how to compile for Windows) and boost. After that things go fairly easily as long as you are familiar with software development. Just start QT creator and build. If you can tell me what is unclear about the instructions one of us can try and improve them but I expect it is going to remain a complex process no matter what we do. The donation pays for Kjell and the development team to maintain the build tool chain to do this for you (none of that is free, it requires machines, the web site and network bandwidth to do the downloads all of which cost money!) Personally, I would (and have) pay the donation to avoid the work of building, but as I am sometimes a developer, I can’t avoid doing the install, I need to be able to build from source. As noted in my original reply Kjell looked at various alternatives to a pay wall (my words, not his ) but all of them take a share of the revenue from the donations and where not considered to be practical for the number of donations we were expecting (as at the point the current donation rate was very small.) I think it is fair to say none of us like the donation model, but I spent 3 years trying to interest anyone in helping me re start development with zero results. The Aisler folks (who provide the Fritzing Fab and share a part of the revenue with Fritzing to fund development and keep the web site running which also takes money) managed to succeed at finding Kjell and within 6 months or so get a new release out just as Fritzing was starting to die because the libraries it is compiled with were getting too old for modern operating systems. While I was trying to start development, there were lots of suggestions of forking the source tree and starting a new project. I kept pointing out that what was needed was people to make pull requests for fixes against the current repo and see what happened as I was told if fixes appeared they would try and put out a new release. A very small handful of us did that, and the 0.9.4 release has about 10 fixes in it. Even now there are few pull requests, Kjell and others on the development team are responsible for most of the progress to date. If you (or anyone else reading this) don’t like the donation mechanism then you need to provide a detailed workable alternative. I don’t consider “some projects upload a charged version on windows store that update to latest automatically” a realistic alternative. Kjell who has lots of experience looked at all the alternatives he could think of, and ended up where we are which is succeeding in funding development despite all the complaining. I think all of us would appreciate a better alternative but it needs to be a detailed and workable one because Kjell can do development (which gets my vote ) or can seek the perfect funding solution (and he has already done that and not found one) he probably can’t do both.
Nothing to be sorry about with your english it is perfectly understandable. You can also post in your native language if you like, I then use google translate to read it and try and answer, but you are doing fine in english.
as i told you many of us are not skillfull as you and the problem is not such the time is the complexity and not clear.
Is a suggestion with respect the building instructions, a youtube video (and i know that you have channel and facebook), or some ilustrative images could help a lot
No, there are two options: commercial (buy it) and open source community edition (which Fritzng uses) free, but only for personal use. The Get Qt now page should have two selections, commercial and community / open source, you want to choose the open source option. That said, selecting the options that you need to download can be complex and you need to do it in the correct order (which may be in the build instructions, I don’t remember) for instance you need to have Visual Studio installed before you install Qt so Qt will find the compilers.
There is a forum post “Build instructions for Linux and Windows” (in the developers section, referenced two posts back) if you click on that link it will take you to what documentation there is on building from source. There are fairly detailed instructions on what you need to do (although they are a couple of years and one Fritzing version out of date, there is also an update that I have not tried). Even with that it is not simple and assumes you are used to development tools.
There are many possibilities, and Kjell looked at (and rejected for various reasons) a lot of them before settling on the current scheme. He could spend all his time trying to find another solution, but both he and I would rather he spend that time on development of Fritzing. What I am saying (to everyone who is unhappy with the current scheme) is: if you don’t like the current setup then spend the time to fully document an acceptable alternative and propose it. Like it or not the, the current method is working and it is unlikely the developers will spend more time looking for an alternative. If you want one you need to do the work involved with making it happen (at some point you will likely need help from Kjell, as the official contact with Fritzing) but there is a lot of work to be done before that point, in the form of a business proposal of how your scheme will work and what it will cost in time and money.
Someone has to be willing to do that. I have done the instructions that exist while figuring out the build process from the (poor) documentation on the develpment wiki and documented it in the forum posting. I don’t do You Tube videos and am not likely to do much more on the build instructions as they should be clear enough if you have the necessary skill to do the build. It is complex, The code base is complex. It can not be made simpler to build from source. The alternative is to make a donation and download a packaged installation, but someone has to pay to create that packaged installation (and for the web site, forum and development.) We would be happy to hear of a practical alternative (that doesn’t involve stopping development to try some alternate funding scheme that may or may not work.
) but all of them take a share of the revenue from the donations and where not considered to be practical for the number of donations we were expecting (as at the point the current donation rate was very small.) I think it is fair to say none of us like the donation model, but I spent 3 years trying to interest anyone in helping me re start development with zero results. The Aisler folks (who provide the Fritzing Fab and share a part of the revenue with Fritzing to fund development and keep the web site running which also takes money) managed to succeed at finding Kjell and within 6 months or so get a new release out just as Fritzing was starting to die because the libraries it is compiled with were getting too old for modern operating systems. While I was trying to start development, there were lots of suggestions of forking the source tree and starting a new project. I kept pointing out that what was needed was people to make pull requests for fixes against the current repo and see what happened as I was told if fixes appeared they would try and put out a new release. A very small handful of us did that, and the 0.9.4 release has about 10 fixes in it. Even now there are few pull requests, Kjell and others on the development team are responsible for most of the progress to date. If you (or anyone else reading this) don’t like the donation mechanism then you need to provide a detailed workable alternative. I don’t consider “some projects upload a charged version on windows store that update to latest automatically” a realistic alternative. Kjell who has lots of experience looked at all the alternatives he could think of, and ended up where we are which is succeeding in funding development despite all the complaining. I think all of us would appreciate a better alternative but it needs to be a detailed and workable one because Kjell can do development (which gets my vote