[rayiner]

People don't buy ARM cores because of the trademark or support services. They do it because key implementation techniques for the ARM instruction set are patented, and the high-performance softcores are protected by copyright: http://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/a-long-look-at-how-arm-li.... Yes, they support it just like any company supports their products, but it's not a "free product, pay for support" play like RedHat.

[logfromblammo]

People don't buy iPads because of the ARM chips. But if the alternative is a Xiangdi Industries "10 Tablet" with a zhMIPS CPU and a not-entirely-unlike-Android OS, the lack of any familiar brand names may influence the consumer to just pay more for the sure thing (to them).

(I made those names up. Any similarity to actual brands is entirely coincidental.)

In any case, I was not trying to say that ARM cores are free to use. I was comparing their business to open hardware, and pointing out that people often prefer to pay for the ability to not delve too deeply into the details of what they are buying.

[comex]

The ARM case does seem to be working out fairly well for most involved. On the other hand, look at x86. While of course competing with Intel would be hard under any circumstances, I bet the market for x86 processors (compatible with x86 software) would be more competitive if ISA patent licenses weren't limited to a certain few grandfathered-in companies.