GnomeEDA

[Dave <admin thedigitalcave org>]

I've seen some works going on in the EDA (Engineering Design Automation)
area.  Having struggled through Engineering school some years ago often
using freeware on DOS, me thinks an organized assault on this front
would be very good.  A question of resources?

The one tool I keep running into is Oregeno, I was a EE, but do mostly
computing and project mgmt. these days (M$ project clone would be
good).  But the idea is sweet.  There are varied and sundry tools that
might could be brought together into a cohesive whole using Gnome/GTK+ 
I think I've even seen a project page down this vein somewhere.

I'm just throwing this out there, but maybe if someone with strong
conviction teamed up w/ leadership from RH or VA Linux (name recognition
counts), one might could approach DARPA with a proposal on this and get
say about a $2M start up funding (assuming they would fund a GPL'd
software project).  If it was wordsmithed just right, I reckon anything
is possible.   God knows it would be helpful for the world's (I mean US)
engineering students.. they are often forced onto the M$ platform.

That cash could pull in about 4 or 5 key developers full time to start
hashing out the architecture.  After that begins, and some nice results
are out, industry (and likely educational institutions) would probably
start throwing some bones at the project.

Regards,
Dave