It is cool as heck that truly open hardware might actually win in our lifetimes. (ARM was an interesting start, but too much licensing).

For me, it's the fact that it is a truly open standard, with no licensing entanglements. It has the potential to be a durable ecosystem, worth investing in.

> There is something about RISC-V that really inspires lots of hackers

"Not Arm" :)

Simplicity, it's a modern MOS 6502. Base RISC-V has even less instructions than 6502.

For me, part of it is also the beauty of the ISA. I think it is just really well thought out with its extensions and namespacing for custom ISAs.

It's a bunch of things; many of the reasons are actually technical. It's very simple to compile to RISC-V instructions.