I understand your point, though I have never done synthesis at that scale. Still, with yosys, Verilator and other tools, you can have some form of CI. Using mu

I understand your point, though I have never done synthesis at that scale. Still, with yosys, Verilator and other tools, you can have some form of CI. Using multiple simulators can reduce the number of bugs, and no one in their right mind would spend >100K for a tapeout without checking it with all available tools. I can see day-to-day development being performed with yosys and others, with punctual verification (including the final one) on other simulators. There's plenty of advantages: local/offline development environment, CI, multiple tools to help home in on issues, better perf in some cases, no fighting over license seats (heck, even one seat should be enough). Now, if companies would donate a few percent of their license costs to FLOSS alternatives, the software landscape would be very different indeed.