Here's my theory on why open-source products (given enough time to develop) are often higher quality than their closed-source non-free counterparts:
Industry has a vested interest in maximizing returns. This means that it tends to pump out very practical, usable products, but often gets stuck at local maxima. It makes more sense for Intel to keep hammering away at x64 than to switch to a possibly better architecture, even if switching might be better in the very long run. OSS is driven not only by industry, but also by academics (who have a vested interest in doing highly experimental research) and hobbyists (who have a vested interest in quality and simplicity). This additional set of interests means that OSS is being pulled in more directions and is more likely to escape local maxima. If software was entirely driven by industry, we'd probably still be using FORTRAN or something.
Now, the problem is that open source projects tend to have fewer resources and less time pressure, so development is slower. This is fine for computer science, where an academic who develops a novel language or algorithm can reasonably expect it to be cutting-edge for quite a while and still in use decades in the future.
On the other hand, processor design moves so fast that the only way to keep up is to dump tons of money and man-hours into pursuing the latest and greatest as aggressively as possible.
As the pace of processor development slows down (if it does), it will give a chance for the slower, but higher-quality, work of academics and hobbyists to catch up.
I am looking forward to all sorts of esoteric architectures implemented on all sorts of esoteric theories to come out of the woodwork. We're very likely to find some good stuff that we haven't thought of yet.
I think it really depends on which type of software and which part of quality you look at.
The good open source software is mostly written at companies (like linux for example), but I guess having a few hobbyists and academics in there kind of helps. One field open source is usability, as you usually need to pay usability experts and conduct expensive experiments.
You're right that the hardware field is totally different from the software field, however you have to see that instruction sets, which is what RISC-V is about hardly ever change. Today's x86 processors are still compatible with 8086 from 1976 (and assembly compatible with 8008 from 1972). Similarly ARM is from 1985.
The thing that's keeping hobbyists out is that producing ASICs is prohibitly expensive.
Industry has a vested interest in maximizing returns. This means that it tends to pump out very practical, usable products, but often gets stuck at local maxima. It makes more sense for Intel to keep hammering away at x64 than to switch to a possibly better architecture, even if switching might be better in the very long run. OSS is driven not only by industry, but also by academics (who have a vested interest in doing highly experimental research) and hobbyists (who have a vested interest in quality and simplicity). This additional set of interests means that OSS is being pulled in more directions and is more likely to escape local maxima. If software was entirely driven by industry, we'd probably still be using FORTRAN or something.
Now, the problem is that open source projects tend to have fewer resources and less time pressure, so development is slower. This is fine for computer science, where an academic who develops a novel language or algorithm can reasonably expect it to be cutting-edge for quite a while and still in use decades in the future.
On the other hand, processor design moves so fast that the only way to keep up is to dump tons of money and man-hours into pursuing the latest and greatest as aggressively as possible.
As the pace of processor development slows down (if it does), it will give a chance for the slower, but higher-quality, work of academics and hobbyists to catch up.
I am looking forward to all sorts of esoteric architectures implemented on all sorts of esoteric theories to come out of the woodwork. We're very likely to find some good stuff that we haven't thought of yet.