Has anybody played with upverter.com? They aspire to be "github for circuits" but only have schematic editing and crude BOM management so far: no layouts or gerber generation. They are y-combinator funded and seem to have a few employees so maybe they'll pull something off. Might already be useful for collaborative design? Slick UI/graphics, but it pains me to see companies launch with half-baked products. I wonder what file formats they use internally? They have PNG etc export.
I'm also curious to see what comes out of boldport.com; their schtick is "apt-get for FPGAs". Maybe they can target Willow? They seem to have a grand plan and lots of blog posts about "indieEDA": https://www.boldport.com/blog/?p=20
I was skeptical that bildr.org would stick around as long as it has, but they keep pumping out really well documented projects. Not a company, I think it's a side project (?).
Lastly there is solderpad.com, which has almost zero info on the page but seems to have interesting people involved in the UK. gbulmer, do you know anything about this?
I'm really excited to see new EDA tools like Fritzing get actively developed. I'm optimistic that open source EDA tools will happen in the near future... KiCad and gEDA have been stale for a long time but either of them could be really spruced up with just a handful more dedicated volunteers working for a year. Open file formats (and file format converters) for footprints, symbols, circuits and layouts would make the electronics world such a better place. I'm pessimistic about Eagle ever actually having a good open file format, but perhaps one of the above web companies will spearhead things. A giant wiki library for generic designs and parts would save so much time!
(ps, where else to people go for general electronics news and discussion? I abortively started http://slackernews.org/ but perhaps lived up to the title too closely. There are tons of forms but I guess i'm looking for something more news/vote oriented... the electronics subreddit? the electronics section of stackexchange?)
