Near the end of the essay, the author mentions that the folks at Berkeley considered OpenRISC.

Would that have been a better path do go down, to throw a bunch of work, money, and R&D after, or is there anything inherently bad about that design besides delay slots?

I kinda feel that even the smartest people will build great things on crumbling foundations as long as those foundations are available. I'm thinking of NASA embracing RISC-V or anyone who decided to write secure-by-design software in C.

*edit - rephrased question for clarity