Ironically, they wouldn't need to spend the time re-implementing those componenents and dealing with licenses if they had just made their code open source to begin with.

The community would likely gladly help them with anything we can help with; and licenses would be less of an issue. It wouldn't be the first time closed source stuff has been made alternatives to it in open source specifically for reasons like licensing. MP3 for instance... not a terribly hard thing to deal with anymore, but once upon a time ago..

Anyways. Nvidia's true reason for doing anything is ultimately in their namesake. They want people to be envious. Part of making people envious is to keep things they want away from them.

So, yeah... that's the real reason. If they actually gave a flying fuck about the rest of us, they wouldn't be that way.