RISC-V instruction set (ISA) is open source. But the actual implementation (microarchitecture) has no such obligations. And among the implementations that can run Linux, none (that I know) are open source designs.
With regards to hardware backdoors - no, closed source RISC-V implementations are not easier than x86 or ARM to audit for security.
RISC-V instruction set (ISA) is open source. But the actual implementation (microarchitecture) has no such obligations. And among the implementations that can run Linux, none (that I know) are open source designs.
With regards to hardware backdoors - no, closed source RISC-V implementations are not easier than x86 or ARM to audit for security.