People should note that just because the RISC-V ISA is open source, that does not mean that hardware will be. I imagine most won’t be, in the real world.

Think of it somewhat like BSD. Open source itself, but due to the license, stuff built on it (such as MacOS or PlayStationOS) very often isn’t.

It’s still an improvement, because at least now there’s the possibility of truly open hardware, but we should temper our expectations a little.

RISC-V doesn’t guarantee a wonderful open future. That will only happen if we make it happen.