[DigitalJack]

The problem is a lack of overlap between software engineers and hardware engineers, particularly in the open source arena.

I'm a digital designer, and do software as a hobby. I've thought about writing up a guide to get into fpga hacking. Tools are always a hindrance. Simulation has some free tooling, but as far as I know there is nothing for synthesis.

EDIT: There is this https://code.google.com/p/vtr-verilog-to-routing/. It targets hypothetical architectures.

There could possibly be a kickstarter idea here to pick an architecture they have targeted and get some designers to implement this. You could even host one of these theoretical architectures on top of another FPGA. It'd be slower than the host, but feasible.