As part of an on-going discussion on the KiCAD devleopers mailing list about library crowdsourcing, I wanted to put together more detail about the issue. I've been using KiCAD for a handful of months and was unaware of some of the organizations, such as CircuitHub and KiCadCloud , that have been working to improve the situation until this discussion. Background PCB development flow A typical circuit board development process in KiCAD looks something like: Schematic (eeschema) Design a circuit Locate components (or create the component symbols ) Add components to the schematic Connect components on a schematic using the component symbol Map component to footprint (cvpcb) Choose the specific footprint for each component in the schematic (or create the necessary footprints ) Layout (pcbnew) Place components Route the signals on the board The problem During schematic step #2 and the component mapping process, the highlighted steps above, any component tha