Semiconductor manufacturers understand that giving free samples of their chips to hobbyists creates an environment that breeds future sales: if 1 out of the 1000 people they mailed samples uses their chip in the design for a commercial product, they come out ahead.

Proprietary programming languages that are inconvenient for hobbyists to obtain- any more friction than cloning a git repo or installing via a package manager- have stunted open-source ecosystems, and in turn limited opportunities for grass-roots adoption.