>Sure, it's not a resounding success story, but it helps me get my SoC to market sooner and at a lower cost (no need to even spend time negotiating with anybody).

Ok, but you're then dumping what at least a million dollars into someone else's firmware that is unsupported if there is an issue? IDK. I can think of lots of cases where it might make sense for the hobbiest, or for softcores or for weird applications - but...

There are engineers from STM with desks at ARM, and engineers from ARM with desks at STM. I just don't see STM saying "fuck it, let's just spool up some core we contributed to as a fully in house project". They already need to support their peripherals and production, maybe they are paying enough to ARM to make it worth it to add core code to that list, maybe not.

ARM makes a ton of money, but they also assume all of the contractual obligations for issues and support. I'm not sure the entire industry would be using ARM if it made sense to spool up your own, even as open source. But again, IDK.