Without a doubt the case.
Pretty much all of the major vendors require a license agreement, and a node lock to a specific MAC for your computer.
They generally do hobble to toolchain a little bit as far as the number of LUTs you compile to. Top tier, huge AMD/Intel chipsets are gonna require you to shell out to use all the LUTs and specialized IP blocks.
This. I'm currently planning on purchasing one of the Kria KV260s for that reason. They're above budget, but are quite capable and you get the free Vivado/Vitis toolchain
Be forwarned, when I bought one, I had to email back and forth for a couple weeks with Xilinx and sign some legal stuff before they would ship it, even within the US. Might've been ITAR but they wanted to be really sure I wasn't going to build a guided missile with it.
I wonder if they could just put a fuse in the silicon that blows out if subjected to beyond a reasonable acceleration or abrupt altitude change?
I'm planning on ordering one via Digikey, but that's fine. I work in the US defense industry regardless, so I shouldn't have too much trouble.
The other side of the story is the availability of a low-cost/free and capable tool chain. It's my impression that AMD/XILINX wins on that.
Of course this also depends strongly on the purpose. I think open source tool chains are not yet a state that you can bigger problems with it, so if you want to get into the job market, maybe train with a vendor software. Different story if it's for home projects. And if you want to hack on the open source tool chain, all the power to you!