While also excited about the coming RISC-V era, I'm in doubts as to whether there's anything to gain for end users' freedom from the switch to an open-ISA as major manufacturers won't open-license the hardware of their processors regardless of the ISA. The ones that RISC-V will give independence to are the manufacturers of Eastern countries that are at odds with the West. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but that it seems to me ARM processors are not conceptually a worse choice for an end user than RISC-V. At least one doesn't have to go to the extent of Libreboot to be confident in that one's bootloader doesn't hold back doors.
While also excited about the coming RISC-V era, I'm in doubts as to whether there's anything to gain for end users' freedom from the switch to an open-ISA as major manufacturers won't open-license the hardware of their processors regardless of the ISA. The ones that RISC-V will give independence to are the manufacturers of Eastern countries that are at odds with the West. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but that it seems to me ARM processors are not conceptually a worse choice for an end user than RISC-V. At least one doesn't have to go to the extent of Libreboot to be confident in that one's bootloader doesn't hold back doors.