SparkFun a La Carte – $949 point and click custom board service –
Let’s take a look at how to design a custom board using SparkFun A La Carte (ALC), a point-and-click custom electronics board design service from SparkFun. We’ll walk through designing a board as well as other helpful tips for using ALC.
Check it out here: https://alc.sparkfun.com
Saw this in the FAQ, SparkFun does own the designs made, that is interesting –
Who owns the design?
Good question. For a variety of legal reasons, SparkFun owns the design, and here’s why: The ALC system is built on automation. Let’s say you drop eight blocks onto a design and then order. If you owned this design, what happens when another customer adds those same eight blocks onto their design? You each likely have a very different target application, with different code, but this other customer needs to use the same eight blocks. For this reason, SparkFun owns the design, but grants you the right to produce and use boards of the design. If you need full ownership, you can purchase the design files to use as you see fit.
Update: As of June, 2024 it looks like the https://alc.sparkfun.com website was shut down and it now redirects to sparkfun.com the wayback machine has some previously saved snapshots. There is no mention of the shutting down of the service on the SparkFun blog/news section though. 2021 was the last time it was on the SparkFun blog.