It would be cool to see companies start offering homelab licenses for people to play around with and get experience before buying into a whole ecosystem.

Like you said, I think companies should be prohibited from locking security updated behind a license paywall. Features are one thing, and while I would also like free homelab licenses, I understand why companies don't offer them, especially for products like enterprise firewalls, routers, and switches. A company shouldn't require you to pay more money to secure something they shipped with a vulnerability. Honestly this kind of shit should take precedence over the squabbling about USB-C, App Store monopolies, or whatever other flavor of the month issue the EU or the US is lambasting tech companies for.