Earlier quoted context omitted.
For Nvidia, the most likely reason they've strongly avoided Open Sourcing their drivers isn't anything like that. It's simply a function of their history. They used to have professional level graphics cards ("Nvidia Quadro") using exactly the same chips as their consumer graphics cards. The BIOS of the cards was different, enabling different features. So people wanting those features cheaply would buy the consumer gr…
Customers really, really hate segmentation of product [1], esp. if the product end up being exactly the same! I think companies should stop trying to segment customers. It's a long term loss, despite a short term gain. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...
I don't think customers mind segmentation at all. Just, as you said, when it's a purposely crippled, identical product, they hate it.