I suppose that "well known" is a bit subjective -- the startup I'm involved in is quite well known to myself and my associates, but I'm sure that's not what you meant. But what does it matter if we are well known or not? The projects I've used gEDA on are more than mission critical -- they are business critical; i.e., if any of these projects were to go badly, the entire company would pretty much immediately be out of business. (Such is life in a startup. Second chances are rare.) And I've got several years of my life invested in this venture, so this is not something I take lightly. Despite this fact, I never seriously considered using anything other than gEDA/pcb. Yes, there is a steep learning curve, but there's a reward at the top of that hill.
The roughest part of gEDA in my experience has been pcb, the board layout component, but it has been progressing in leaps and bounds recently, thanks to the efforts of the developers. Gone is the old klunky Xaw GUI, replaced by a new HID architecture that allows different UIs to be plugged into the core engine, plus a shiny new GUI based on GTK+.
In short, gEDA works for me, and it works well. It runs on my platform of choice, it is stable, it has all the features I need, the file formats are open and easy to manipulate in a text editor or with custom scripts, the price is right, and, most importantly, I know I'll never be at the mercy of the vendor. One thing gEDA does not do very well is hold your hand, but there are a number of tutorials out there that walk you through all the basics. With a little patience (and I do mean a little), you can put all the pieces together yourself. And it's getting easier every day, it seems.
So to answer your challenge -- have you ever bothered to actually learn to use gEDA? Ever designed a board with it? Is there something in particular it can't do that you really need?