For bloatware to be a meaningful term, I think it needs to go beyond just some arbitrary percent of users don’t need or use it. For an OS, having baseline apps which are useful across a wide variety of hardware setups and use cases is reasonable, even if they don’t apply in your particular situation. Bloat would be superfluous apps that replicate baseline features or baseline apps that have grown in scope beyond what’s strictly necessary.

No, it’s licensed. RISC-V isn’t necessarily open sourced either. It’s an open standard, but you can develop your own proprietary designs on it.

Ah yes, going to court, a famously simple and cheap process for getting people to do what you want without torching a valuable business relationship.