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Interesting bit of trivia: SolveSpace comes from M-Labs, formerly known as Milkymist, creators of the Milkymist One video synthesizer. M-Labs now focuses on quantum information experiment control software. [1]

I remember watching Milkymist/Migen talks [2][3] given by creator Sébastien Bourdeauducq years ago and stumbling across the early SolveSpace site at the time in researching his background. It was already looking quite promising back then, and I got the impression they were using/developing it for their own CAD needs based on what I saw in their IRC channel. There's clearly a lot of talent in that group.

[1] https://m-labs.hk/about.html

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se0VhwgpzZg

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zADdKAtHM1Y

⬐ app4soft

> Interesting bit of trivia: SolveSpace comes from M-Lab

You are wrong! Just read it's page on M-Labs site[0]:

> It was originally released by Jonathan Westhues under the GPLv3 license and is now further developed at M-Labs.

SolveSpace firstly was a private project of Jonathan Westhues (from Cambridge MA) known as 2D only CAD SketchFlat[1], later it was extended to 3D and renamed to SolveSpace[2] (Windows only).

There is good interview on LibreGraphicsWorld[3] blog with Jonathan Westhues that cover history of SolveSpace from SketchFlat to SolveSpace 2.0.

After SolveSpace 2.0 switched to open-source (since July 28, 2013) it's sources was published firstly on it's website[4], then on Gitorious[5] and later on Github[6].

After it one of users make a fork of it and call it SolveSpace 2.1[7] - this user was whitequark (member of M-Labs). Later 'whitequark' was invited by Jonathan Westhues (aka 'jwesthues') to original SolveSpace repository on Github[6] and they collaborate on continuous development of SolveSpace 2.1, that bring Linux and macOS support. Since this moment main role in SolveSpace project got 'whitequark'

Later Alexey Egorov (aka 'Evil-Spirit') join to SolveSpace develompent as one of core C++ programmer and already give many new features that already appear as pull request to original repo[6] from his own repo[8].

So, SolveSpace come from Jonathan Westhues, not from M-Labs! Currently it managed by 'whitequark' (member of M-Labs) and few other developers, and during last year under 'whitequark' control project development has very slow activity, most of new features and bug fixes now provided by Alexey Egorov...

I also took part in SolveSpace development as tester and ideas generator, but sadly developers of SolveSpace are very aggressive and not very friendly with its users... Now I'm working on AppImage packaging using own repo[9] with latest commits from 'Evil-Spirit' repo[8].

P.S.: Few years ago there was thread about SolveSpace on HN[10]. Also, there is page for SolveSpace on Wikipedia[11].

[0] https://m-labs.hk/solvespace/

[1] http://cq.cx/sketchflat.pl

[2] http://solvespace.com

[3] http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/solvespace-released...

[4] http://solvespace.com/dl/solvespace-rel2.0.zip

[5] https://gitorious.org/solvespace

[6] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace

[7] https://github.com/whitequark/solvespace

[8] https://github.com/evil-spirit/solvespace

[9] https://github.com/symbian9/solvespace-appimage

[10] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12650290

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolveSpace

⬐ newnewpdro

My mistake!

I had the impression it came from M-Labs because I discovered SolveSpace by observing their IRC channel where SolveSpace development was occurring - complete with a commit bot spamming the channel with their work.

Nothing but respect for everyone involved was intended.

⬐ app4soft

Since December 18, 2017, there no any commits[0] in 'master' branch...

[0] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/commits/master

⬐ newnewpdro

My memory is unsurprisingly imperfect.

⬐ jwesthues

> Interesting bit of trivia: SolveSpace comes from M-Labs

I developed SolveSpace, and whitequark (via M-Labs) is the current maintainer. He's responsible for all the non-Windows ports, plus the last few years of features and some significant refactoring. We hope the latter will make the codebase more accessible to other contributors.

SolveSpace's NURBS operations are worse than OpenCASCADE's, but they're literally orders of magnitude smaller. There's still no great free alternative to Parasolid, SOLIDS++, etc. SolveSpace's constraint solver is pretty good, and people seem to mostly like the UI.

⬐ app4soft

Jonathan, You write faster than me[0] :-)

> plus the last few years of features and some significant refactoring.

Last few years there only Alexey Egorov's new features... :-/

While 'whitequark' is good programmer, his role as maintainer very bad for SolveSpace project itself - he don't work well with community at all. He fully non-responsive to Linux users, he not want hear any ideas from community...

Project now mostly in freeze...

Hope, You will find better project manager (such as Yorik now is in FreeCAD) for SolveSpace for make it more friendly for community. 'whitequark' should be just one of SolveSpace programmer, not maintainer, IMHO.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797563

⬐ jwesthues

> He fully non-responsive to Linux users

Well, he was nice enough to write the Linux port in the first place, and he personally develops under Linux, so...

To develop free, general-purpose, desktop, parametric 3d CAD software is fairly thankless work. It's a huge task, and relatively few developers have the necessary mathematical skill and ME domain knowledge. The commercial market is mature, limiting opportunities to monetize. I have great respect for the time and other resources that whitequark (and others) have chosen to expend here in spite of that.

⬐ app4soft

I'm not say that he is bad programmer or all things that he did are bad.

Some things (i.e. in code) are really cool, but some are very bad (increasing dependency, mostly drop OpenGL1.x support, not providing official builds of SolveSpace for Linux, etc.)

I just tell, that as maintainer (project manager of open-source software) 'whitequark' is not good at all.

He always answer to users from point of coder, not from point of project manager.

I still hope that SolveSpace project could get good project manager that will give for 'whitequark' more time for coding, and take out him from communication with "stupid users"

For QA and communication with testers SolveSpace need another person, that will not be so rude as 'whitequark', IMHO.

⬐ app4soft

It's look like nothing changed - whitequark still respond[0] to users and contributors in wrong way...

[0] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/318