Sun Microelectronics is no longer visible. I think it is. First, the cost of proprietary IP is daunting for startup companies. IP royalties might hinder sales of any product that is well into the commodity market window. The new introductions gained quick acceptance from companies that couldn't afford the larger investment but needed access to the prized architectures.
Free cores promise to engage more companies, spark more projects, and yield less-expensive products.
Second, a soft core is welcome. Leading architectures are also now offered as soft cores. Configurable architectures can be offered only as soft cores. A system could be so intensive in DSP activities that the processor would take second seat anyway. From the software point of view, barring large percentages of assembly language, switching to a different core may have little impact if code can be easily cross-compiled and debugged on the new architecture.