@hrw That's great, and I'm more than happy to use whatever I have in my drawer at the moment for my one-off personal projects.
However, for projects that I design for others to build, I would prefer the board to be still available for purchase in, say, five years from now. Pi pico has a high chance for that, even if it's a clone and not the original. Some random footprint from a one-off production run, not so much.