Neither of those were free designs. 8051s are heavily cloned, but it's not like there's heavily used HDL floating around for free. Additionally the gate count

Neither of those were free designs. 8051s are heavily cloned, but it's not like there's heavily used HDL floating around for free. Additionally the gate count niche of an 8051 is rather constrained. MIPS made a big deal about being open, but at the end of the day that seemed to just mean that they put their sales contacts on the main page. 'Open' in that case meant 'open access for our business partners to make RTL changes with the right signed contract'.