There are lots of good reasons to build and support a set of open source EDA tools. A list of some includes:
The best engineers understand not only how to use a tool but also how a tool works. Unfortunately, most EDA knowledge is locked away behind closed source. Without examples, it is difficult to teach a subject. Either the subject is never really understood, or the students waste a lot of time on tasks completely unrelated to the subject (reading in files, creating configurations, munging data into forms for standard analysis tools, etc.). A standard set of open source EDA tools preserves the knowledge of the past and provides the infrastructure for the future.