They are misunderstanding why RISC-V and Raspberry Pi are popular: it's not so much that they're freeware but that they are cheap. Very few people in IT know ho

They are misunderstanding why RISC-V and Raspberry Pi are popular: it's not so much that they're freeware but that they are cheap. Very few people in IT know how to implement processors in hardware even with an FPGA. What makes a processor popular are cheap, affordable systems people can easily acquire in an online shop at prices which compete with or are below contemporary P. C. tin bucket hardware. If IBM wants an uptake of POWER systems and people to develop on them and for them, the only thing which might make a dent are sub-$500 USD complete workstations and rack mountable servers. Otherwise, they will repeat the same mistake which Sun made, that is, they open sourced their UltraSPARC T1 under GNU GPL but the uptake was nil, because few had the knowledge to design systems around the processor. People want cheap, ready made toys they can tinker with immediately.