For the Pi, it's perhaps more about keeping other companies happy, companies with expensive lawyers, and not necessarily any specific regulation. But that's just my speculation.

I was going for the general sense that eBay isn't being an ass here because it's fun, but because cover-your-ass has been beaten into businesses over and over again.

Clever startups that want to do things better are possible. But they have to have real answers for what's different with them that will allow them to be better.

(Same for when someone is proposing to rewrite software to get rid of all of the cruft. Much of the cruft is actually consists of under-documented scars from battles with corner cases.)