Information wants to be valuable.
I first heard this gem from Larry Wall, creator of the Perl programming language. Nonetheless, it is also clear that others, Bill Gates being the paramount example, have found that the best way to make their information valuable is to restrict access to it. No-one can question that Microsoft has created enormous value for itself and its shareholders, and even its critics should admit that Microsoft has been a key enabler of the ubiquitous personal computing on which so much of our modern business world depends. History has proven that each of their strategies can work. The question, then, is one of goals, and of the strategies to reach those goals.