Hi Peter!
I do not know if I understand You right.
Sorry, I was rather terse.
You ask about how people could contribute to the technical development?
Yes, in software terms, what's the best way to enable people to submit patches?
- From my point of view I see very few open, interchangeable formats / tools in the field of electronic CAD.
This is indeed a problem for Open Source Hardware!
I already suggested colleagues to do a project into this direction, but I was not able to meet interested people (in my small world).
I'll start to collect design tools people currently use on our wiki and see if I can make some sense of the landscape.
- We can discuss the specs, our »wishlist« for this device. The design phase is very important and for this, we do not need any tools. Only discussion and I will put our agreements into the specs.
Right, some means of tracking requirements, features, stories, and issues ..
- So for this dvb-s2 router project, I suggest to discuss the specs, then give the schematic and pcb layout work to a professional company. This will lead to a project folder tree / file set for a commercial not-open CAD tool. But we can publish the schematics, pcb prints, silk prints and docu as pdf-files. And we can be ready to give the whole project to somebody who wants to take care, in case we do not want to go on with it.
That's great!
- During the first weeks of the »professional phase«, there will be a lot of discussions with the company. I could forward important questions and we could discuss them together, then I will respond our agreement to them.
It would be interesting for you to record your decision process, say in a blog, and open that up so people can learn from your project and contribute advice.