[dtparr]

Raspberry PIs have had a similar thing with VC-1 and MPEG-2 decoding requiring a small fee for about a decade now. In this case, to cover the patent licensing cost so as to not add it into the base hardware, but paying a fee to unlock features resident in the hardware is not new in computing. (I realize there are likely other/older ones I'm sure, but that was the first in my mind)

[Zenst]

Yes and even with MPEG-2 patent expired, they are still offering that https://codecs.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ so not sure how that cost breaks down today.

[can16358p]

Raspberry probably isn't profiting from it though, they're legally obliged to do it, and they are also trying to make their hardware cheap as possible, so making it optional in a device like RPi makes sense.

I don't think the big players have the same intentions though.