[fragmede]

Licensing. Especially when hardware is concerned. Google, big as they are, don't own the rights to NXP or especially Broadcom's IP, and so they can't.

[IntelMiner]

Google (in theory) isn't making any more of these controllers, nor updating the firmware anymore

Surely there's no clause that says they have to perpetually license old firmware binaries?

[kalleboo]

If they want to perpetually distribute old firmware binaries they have to perpetually license them