HTC & Open Design - Why not?

[SweetBearCub]

I was thinking about this tonight and decided to put it to the community. I currently own a Sprint Touch Pro, and have owned a PPC-6700 and a Mogul in the past. None of these handsets have ever done everything they promised on the box and in the advertising materials until they were modified to varying degrees by software from the hacking community.

That being the case, I wonder why HTC constantly changes things to make it harder for the hackers to work on the handsets? For example, the ExtROM was unlocked for writing on the 6700. Great, it made customization much easier. We come to the 6800, which used a different method which took more time to discover. As far as the 6850, I don't think that the method has yet been discovered. (Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.) Another example would be that HTC locks the bootloader of our handsets so that they must be hacked to even begin accepting a non-stock ROM. What purpose does that serve?

I'm aware that carriers play a role in the development cycle of the handsets, and have likely requested some of the stuff I'm talking about, but you would think that HTC would prefer to have the reputation of being hackable (ala Tivo), which is a notable boost in the eyes of gadget users. Why don't they embrace us? It's almost as if they are actively fighting us.