Introducing "Anthill", the First VP8 Hardware Encoder IP Release

I was interested until I found that "IP Release" is apparently code for "there's not actually any download link on our site, and you have to follow a complex application process to even look at it."

A: WebM RTL source code (VHDL or Verilog) is available at no charge. Please contact us for licensing details.

If it's available at no charge, why do we have to "license it"? Why not just post the source under a BSD license, like the C equivalent?

Is there some reason why "free hardware" seems to be so much more difficult to get moving than "free software", even though both of them are represented by source code in a human-readable language?