Altium monitoring usage of software by startup company - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: JBaczuk
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 04, 2015, 03:01:03 pm
content: Please anyone who knows Altium well, can you please tell me if there are any reasons I should be worried about Altium suggesting a visit and ongoing monitoring of our usage of their product PCBWorks? It is a new package that is supposed to use the bulk of Altium's Designer software but integrates with Solidworks in real time. Altium is insisting that even though it might be creepy, they want to see everything we do with their product so that they can get feedback on it. I'm just wondering if Altium might be interested in the details of our product design that might put our IP at risk? They didn't suggest any upside in it for us, other than they would be there to help us with their software. I know from Dave's videos that Altium does design PCBs as well as develop their software tools, and wonder what type of electronics products they design and whether or not they would design or sell information to a competitive product based on our designs. Thanks!

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 04, 2015, 04:45:26 pm
content: Altium might do stupid thinks, like trying to integrate the FPGA tools in their PCB software, but I don't think they would do illegal things like selling your designs to competitors. I know FAEs of other vendors are contacting companies regularly, e.g. Altera. They know their customers and applications, they know what their new chips and software can do and even if they want to sell their their products, it can be useful for both sides. But if you don't like this, you can just say "no thanks", unless the PCBWorks license agreement has some creepy clauses.

author: JBaczuk
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 04, 2015, 06:48:04 pm
content: Thanks, I do think it is great their recent efforts to reach out to the DIY and startup communities. I don't like how they make everyone's designs public on Circuit Maker, and also knew they design electronics as well so I was concerned about a potential conflict of interest. I'm working with them on resolving these issues, and hopefully it will be a good experience!

author: Zman
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 01:31:18 pm
content: I think this is just a way to have some free beta testers :-)If you don't feel like it - just reject the request, they can not force you!

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 02:22:57 pm
content: Quote from: JBaczuk on August 04, 2015, 06:48:04 pmAltium make bugger-all electronics. Any issues you think you might have with Altium onselling your designs is completely unfounded. They have never done that and they would be sued out of existence if they did. They are an EDA tool maker - end of story.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 02:25:23 pm
content: Quote from: JBaczuk on August 04, 2015, 03:01:03 pmIf there isn't a way to opt out of that, then PCBworks will completely fail. Most of Altium's user base demands IP security, and the program to run locally to facilitate that.

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 03:57:24 pm
content: But they still advertise theNanoBoard, this article is from a few days ago. Bad timing, because it is out of stock in their shop, and Farnell (less than 400 EUR) has marked it as "no longer manufactured"