There's different business models behind greed, though.
You can be an innovator running a license business, with a "friendly" stance towards licensees as you work to grow a massive market. ARM's mostly played this game.
Or, you can be a rent-seeking, litigation-happy shop that seeks to acquire many types of IP to force all market participants to license from you; unilaterally determine payments based on ability to pay; and threaten to tie up indefinitely in litigation anyone who doesn't pay the extortion. This has been Qualcomm's bread and butter.
I don't really think there's much of a difference, contextually. ARM still collects rent, and most of their "innovation" is contributed by their licencees. Pretty much the only thing ARM can peddle at this point is their core designs and ISA, and both of those things are starting to show their age now. Maybe 10 years ago ARM had a "friendly" stance towards their customer base, but nowadays they're frankly no better than Qualcomm. If you want to make a usable ARM computer today, you need to have ISA extensions out-of-the-box and probably design your own cores unless you want to saddle your customers with 8x M53's.
I agree that not all of these companies are equal, but ARM right now reminds me of Intel in 2016. You can only rest on your laurels for so long, sufficiently motivated competitors will be sure to remind you again and again.
Qualcomm systematically shook down everyone in entire industries with a web of technologies, threatening "well, even if you didn't use ____, you'll also violate ____ and ____. And, we'll cut off your access to important chips in ___, ___ ,and ___."
Between the two, ARM is an absolute pleasure to work with.
> If you want to make a usable ARM computer today, you need to have ISA extensions out-of-the-box and probably design your own cores
Samsung just moved from proprietary cores in flagships to Cortex-X + A710 + A510. Ditto for Snapdragon 8. Graviton is using ARM Neoverse-N1/N2. Actual cores from ARM proper are a bigger share of usage than almost anytime before, with Apple being the main remaining exception.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree, then. I don't think your other comment was right either: people typically give Apple more scrutiny because
A. they are the larger company
and
B. they have much more of our personal data than Meta does
In this case, I think the comparison is apt because the only thing that matters is if the current IP owners are abusing their power. In this case, I think ARM and Qualcomm would wind up to be about equally as tyrannical. If you think ARM's slate is clean, you should read into the neverending drama that is ARM China. Nobody is necessarily good here.
You can be an innovator running a license business, with a "friendly" stance towards licensees as you work to grow a massive market. ARM's mostly played this game.
Or, you can be a rent-seeking, litigation-happy shop that seeks to acquire many types of IP to force all market participants to license from you; unilaterally determine payments based on ability to pay; and threaten to tie up indefinitely in litigation anyone who doesn't pay the extortion. This has been Qualcomm's bread and butter.
Or, anywhere inbetween.