Actually no that would defeat the point. There are a couple thing we need to do beyond separating hardware and software: the first is forbidding NDAs around hardware interfaces. If you sell hardware to someone, you cannot force them not to publish the manual.

The second is an interoperability mandate: reproducing the functionality of existing hardware (a CPU ISA, a GPU clone…) must be authorized, and all relevant copyright and patents ignored.

This doesn’t mean that we would end all partnerships. The hardware company can still send prototypes to the software company, so driver development can begin before the hardware gets production-ready. That kind of workflow is common today.

So...why bother with the separation? Why not just publish the specs and let people copy your hardware work and be done?