You've been able to build your own hardware from 74xx series chips for decades now, infact about half a century! Infact, that was the only option you had back in the day. This is retro rather than new, like making a ham radio out of thermionic valves, say. Nothing new, but kinda cool and certainly educational if you're new to the field.

I think that's why the GP took objection to your rather statesmanly proclamation that this was heralding some kind of revolution in open hardware. It isn't, it's just a rather neat project.

However, in your followup comment I definitely agree with you in that as soon as I can fab my own silicon in my garage, the world will be my mollusc. But we're pretty close nowadays with a $20 FPGA from digikey.