Why replace everything? Attempting to replace the likes of autoconf isn't the best way to promote Open Source.
My main interest isn't to promote Open Source, but to make better software engineering practices more accessible by making basic tools easier to use. I think Open Source will promote itself along the way by showing that it can meet the needs of other groups.
With this same mindset, what about a change-control system to replace CVS?
Too ambitious for a first round, and we'd like to see what BitKeeper (www.bitkeeper.com) delivers.
A better approach might be a modular development environment
1. Too ambitious. 2. Hard for potential users to migrate incrementally. 3. Inter-operability will be a big theme in the second round of the design competition. By the time that's done, we may know enough to think about tackling a full-blown development environment. (My instinct is that if we were to try this now, whatever we produced wouldn't be any more of an improvement over existing tools than they are over the Xerox Smalltalk environment of the early 1980s.)
The real question is: what does the Open Source community benefit from YAGNUR? (Yet-Another-GNU-Replacement)
Actually, no --- this project's real question is "Can the Open Source community deliver tools that are usable by non-hardcore programmers?" If the answer is 'yes', then those tools will also make software development easier for the hard core. As Alan Cooper said: The phrase "computer literate user" really means the person has been hurt so many times that the scar tissue is thick enough so he no longer feels the pain. -- Alan Cooper, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" Greg