Three ex-Apple engineers did it by taking out a license with Arm Holdings/Softbank to form their own company and were successful enough to be bought out by Qualcomm 1.2 billion dollars, isn’t the Linux community big enough to support a processor from scratch, taking the same path? Taking that same path seems like a no-brainer if you have the skills.

How would designing a new chip commoditize Apple?

Why doesn't Apple just contribute to Asahi?

That would be missing the point entirely though?

Asahi Linux is a project to provide an option to people who have for one reason or another got themselves an Apple Silicon Mac.

Building their own silicon would serve an entirely different goal.