I have been working with commercial EDA tools (Verilog, VHDL, etc.) for years and always found them to be quite overpriced and frustrating. Whenever I bring up the idea of using open source tools I get responses just like I got when first brining up Linux in the workplace back in 2001. Things like, "you get what you pay for" and "it's only free if you don't value your time." Red Hat (and SUSE/Novell) addressed those concerns for business people and made Linux mainstream (and put UNIX out of business and made a lot money for themselves in the process). Maybe a similar business could do the same for open source EDA.
To that end, I have quite my job and I've spent the past few week putting this business together. What do you think?