[citation][nom]JasonAkkerman[/nom]After you invent the next million dollar idea, let's see how eager you are to relinquish all rights and patents.[/citation]
It is a balance between open-source and close-source. Nobody is going to play your game if the rule is you always win. If Nvidia has all its technology close-sourced, it would be on track to become a monopoly. Nobody likes that so they would not license CUDA software. On the other hand if they open-source everything like Sun did, they will go bankrupt and the world will be worse for it.
The balance is something like Google and IBM are doing, where you open-source some things ( like Android) but keep close source on other things (#1 Search Algorithm).
Microsoft seems to be getting this idea now, with their openness of the Kinet. Apple never has and never will be able to get that idea into their business model, they depend on ignorant users. Thankfully for them, there is no shortage of them.