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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

Linear Technology? I wonder if they can be convinced to open up the source of LTSpice. I'm sure that isn't something they haven't been asked about already... but if they are willing to give such a good simulator away for free, why not show off the source as well?

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if they are willing to give such a good simulator away for free, why not show off the source as well?

Because giving away the source code to their simulator doesn't make any business sense in the way giving a Linux kernel driver does.

Giving away LTSPICE is an effort to commoditize their complements. The complement to an opamp is a high quality simulation model. The complement to a high speed data converter is a working Linux driver for JESD204B. Both decrease the effort involved for ADI's customer to use ADI's parts.

Giving away LTSpice source code doesn't achieve a similar aim.

I'd be happy if they'd just open-source the UI. I couldn't care less about the simulator secret sauce, but there is no reason it has to be saddled to a user interface that makes EAGLE look sane by comparison.

I'm actually glad that they haven't overhauled the UI. It would be great if they made tiny improvements, like making the font size and color defaults more pleasant. Deep blue on black as the default plot is less than stellar.

Also, unless something has changed, ltspice is wholly written by one person.

Right, they certainly shouldn't redo the UI in the core product. But they should make it possible to fork it.

That won't happen. They've specifically said that they maintain it because it helps them sell more product. They also encrypt their models. If they open source it, they lose both encryption and exclusivity.

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