On the subject of free toolchains, I personally suspect we as a community will get to FPGA tools some time after we nail down board design tools, which today are still a work in progress.
For example, boards can be designed by hand, but a large FPGA design would be pretty miserable without an autoplacer and autorouter.
For example, boards can be designed by hand, but a large FPGA design would be pretty miserable without an autoplacer and autorouter.