> today's world of oligopolies and company consolidation

How long until we have to sign a license agreement before we can use an OpAmp? Oh, and the license is only valid for consumer applications. Want to use the OpAmp for enterprise applications? That'll cost you more.

That's if we're lucky. In a darker scenario, all OpAmp designs have been bought by Apple, and you can't even use one if you opened your iPhone because the function has been integrated into the CPU.

Fortunately so far we don't need to sign a license agreement to use an Intel CPU, yet. OpAmp EULA doesn't look like something currently on the horizon. But if an EULAed CPU ever became true, so will an EULAed OpAmp...

> In a darker scenario, all OpAmp designs have been bought by Apple, and you can't even use one if you opened your iPhone because the function has been integrated into the CPU.

Scary, because many microcontrollers already have OpAmps built into them...

Making hardware hasn't gotten any easier except at the edges where open source has taken a hold, but it seems like the only reason you'd want to design hardware anymore is to have more vertical control. Tesla, Apple, Google are all prime examples.

The margins on an OK product just aren't worth it, and to be competitive you have to build the whole thing and provide a reference design that's within 20% of the best out there to even break even. No surprise the market is all oligopolies. If there wasn't open source and affordable fab services coming up, there would really be no hope.