RISC-V is inherently a customizable ISA though, whereas ARM implementations are very specific about what they require to be called an "ARM processor". This wouldnt change from this acq.
no. they're isolated for a reason, with the RISC-V processor being used as the controller to manage the behavior of the other parts of the chip. beyond just licensing ARM is expensive because it's required to implement a lot. With that chip being RISC-V they can make it as minimal and perfectly tuned as possible, so it's slow when it can afford to be cheap and fast when it needs to be.
That isn't the same at all. Canonical being a major backer of Linux is significant, but Linux is significantly open and diversified to where it does not stand or fail by one party, abet there are some that have more influence than others.