Comment Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs (Score 3, Interesting) 78
Sorry to tell you, but you and I are about the only two people in the world to believe this. I use gEDA, BTW, which is another free-as-in-speech alternative to KiCAD, and much older. So far, I have been very frustrated trying to make the case that open hardware designs need to be "elephants all the way down" -- FOSS from the hardware design, to the DA tools (and file formats and libraries), to the OS. In fact, I once had a several-post-long exchange with Limor Fried over at AdaFruit's forums where she finally closed off the thread with: "Tools don't matter." I think her opinion is outrageously misguided and short-sighted, but that is an example of what the leaders of the Open Hardware community are thinking. SparkFun must feel the same way, because all of their designs are released on cripple-ware tools, too.
I think we need an open hardware license that includes a clause about openly documented file formats at the very least, and I would push for a license that calls for design files released on open source DA tools. Imagine where the Linux ecosystem would be today without gcc. Gcc isn't a great compiler, but it is open source, and it got us where we are today.