If anyone is wondering, this is the foundation behind the RISC-V architecture that is supposed to make a dent in the proprietary ISA world of x86 and ARM.
Why? Because this ISA is licensed using a BSD like license which means anyone can use the ISA without paying anything. There have been previous projects like OpenRISC which failed but they're hoping the company backing behind this will make it to the consumer and not remain on paper[1].
So what does this mean for you? Cheaper hardware (hopefully).
Whenever any company licenses a core from ARM to make modifications they pay out of they nose and sign a slew of NDAs. This is another reason why ALL of raspberry pi isn't open. You can't see the CPU internals even though Broadwell is open to it.
Now this ISA, has a bunch of minimal base specs which they must follow as to maintain basic compatibility and then they can add their own extensions as needed. You can see them here[2] - scroll down to the PDF and then the third page - preface.
So what the people excited for the project are hoping for, is to get everyone to use the ISA, because there is very little reason not to, other than developer inertia and because almost all of existing code is for x86 or ARM.
Now this won't bring about the software like open-sourcedness to hardware, because every company isn't to eager to share their specific architecture with you. But some companies which want to, can.
Hopefully this is bring auditable hardware, make everyone focused on specific compiler architecture (like llvm and GCC) and make hardware, especially the cheap microcontrollers even cheaper because they don't need a license or fear getting sued by ARM or Intel(talking about the shady manufactures who break NDAs and go ahead and manufacture micro-controllers without license). So expect microcontroller prices to drop to the ground on eBay.
This architecture, isn't just meant for microcontrollers, don't get me wrong! It is specifically meant to be extensible even for super computers (even 128-bit architecture)! That would require a huge company with large army of engineers involved in CPU engineering. So a startup like approach isn't possible. But keep your hope alive!
When? Soon™
[1]:https://riscv.org/membership/?action=viewlistings - Note how Intel and ARM are absent while almost every other semiconductor manufacturer is present.
[2]:https://riscv.org/specifications/ - embedded PDF on this page