[pillusmany]

Big software companies create and open source stuff which makes them more productive.

Why doesn't this dynamic work in hardware?

Wouldn't "valuing hardware" improve their competitiveness?

[bb88]

Well... no.

I believe this to be a cultural difference as well as an economic one.

The marginal cost of open source software is $0. But if you license an ARM core, you're paying money for it (like Apple is doing for the M-series processors). ARM has to make money somehow for the development of it's core.

Open source software reduced risk -- though it took a while. And the reduction of risk was valued by most companies who wrote software, or relied upon it for it's profit stream. Major software corporations at the time (IBM, Microsoft) only increased the risk in the 1980/90's, because they were mostly rent seeking.

Most problems were seen over and over and over again, hence they could be solved with software. And when the Microsoft failed to solve them, the open source community did.

In hardware there's only a handful of companies, and open sourcing anything might lead to a competitive disadvantage. So whatever tooling AMD has, they're not going to share with Intel.

Also when you're paying ARM for a license, you're getting a good core, and a lot of good support.