[scottapotamas]

Just tacking some detail onto "promote open science".

CERN was/is a large early user and supporter of the open source KiCAD electronics CAD tooling. The downstream impact of improved accessibility to solid ECAD tooling has been a large contributing factor to the growing ecosystem of open electronics.

A lot of really impressive test and measurement equipment to support their research is developed in the open (see https://ohwr.org/project). People on HN are probably most likely to have heard of the White Rabbit timing project, but there's fantastic voltmeter designs, a lot of FPGA projects for carriers, gateware, fun RF designs.

[snugglebert]

They also use the expensive big ECAD tools for the super complex stuff.

But no secret - they are one of the reasons why Kicad isn't an ugly duckling anymore.