gEDA-user: Programming Altera FPGAs without Quartus

[msokolov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Sokolov)]

Hello fellow Open Source Hardware lovers,

I wonder, have any of you heard of an open source project that has reverse-
engineered the Altera SOF format and can generate an SOF from scratch
without using any proprietary software, i.e., without Quartus?  Knowing
how much grief open source hardware developers are having with anti-
opensource FPGA vendors (I'm one of them), I never thought that such a
thing could exist, but a coworker at my current day job (that involves a
lot of work with Altera FPGAs) says that he has come across such an open
source project: he says it could go from EDIF to SOF open source all the
way.  Granted, he warned me that it was very crude and he didn't like it,
but I'm still very very interested.

My coworker does not remember the project name, however, much less its
home page.  I have Googled for it high and low and I've scoured OpenCollector,
to no avail.  Needless to say, this did not help quell my doubts that
such a thing could exist.

Does anyone know of a such an open source project existing?  Or is such
a feat still in the realm of the unattainable?

TIA for any clues,

MS

P.S. I'm primarily interested in targeting the Cyclone II family.