Developer(s) LibreCAD community | Written in C++ | |
 | ||
Initial release 15 December 2011; 5 years ago (2011-12-15) Stable release 2.1.3 / 23 September 2016; 5 months ago (2016-09-23) Operating system | ||
LibreCAD is a free Computer-aided design (CAD) application for 2D design. It works on Linux, OS X, Unix and Windows operating systems.
LibreCAD was developed as a fork of QCad Community Edition. The GUI of LibreCAD is based on Qt4 libraries, so it runs on several platforms in the same way.
Most of the interface and handle concepts are analogous to AutoCAD, making it easier to use for users with experience of this type of commercial CAD application.
LibreCAD uses the AutoCAD DXF file format internally for import and save files, as well as allowing export to many other file formats.
GPLv3 vs GPLv2 controversy
As the GNU LibreDWG library is released under GPLv3 it can't be used by GPLv2 licensed LibreCAD (and FreeCAD) as their licenses are incompatible. A request also went to the FSF to relicense GNU LibreDWG as GPLv2, which was rejected. This controversy has been resolved by writing a new GPLv2 licensed library called libdxfrw, with more complete DWG support.