IMHO, there is little excuse for a manufacturer not to provide sufficient
documentation to use their product to ANYONE.  Full support would be a
different matter.

This is, after all, why a lot of use are using PIC's, right?  Microchip
targetted the unusually small developer as customer, while other vendors
were saying "sure we have a 28 pin microcontroller.  In masked ROM versions.
If you need at least 50K.  And no you can't see the programming algorithm
for our OTP processors - just buy a $$real-device-programmer$$..."

Judging by the number of vendors who have since issued pic-like processors,
microchip must not be regretting that decision TOO much...

BillW