The GNOME project at 15

CAD is a weak area, I agree and has been for a long time. I too used QCAD/LibreCAD _a lot_ over last two years, and it is rather 1980s, but recently we got FreeCAD, which is proper 3D CAD usingthe OpenCASCADE back-end freed-up from a proprietary vendor. And libreDWG which helps break the .DWG stranglehold. Free software can be important in CAD and BIM too because it has the same advantages in this area as in others (openness to all formats, ubiquity, ability to fix things). Breaking the strangehold of the proprietary vendors is a long slow process, but opening up data formats and libraries really works in our favour and it seems to me that there is steady progress here and it's not all hopeless. There is a huge amount still to do for Architects to be able to use a Linux desktop, but like libreoffice, FreeCAD works on all 3 popular desktop platforms so people can use Free Software even if they can't use a Free OS for everything yet.

I see real signs of progress in this area, after a rather bare period.