[Thunderbolt General] yareally:
HTC doesn't want to get the same bad rep Moto does for their locked phones (before you jumpt to conclusions that no one cares except a small minority on this, hear me out because it's far more than that). I'm not sure how it is for everyone else, but if you happen to be known among your friends and family as being the "computer expert," they tend to ask you what you would want to buy yourself. The reaction of modders against HTC is probably something they don't want just for the bad PR and referrals they will get. I stopped telling friends/family to buy Moto when they screwed everyone and HTC when they started to lock things down (except for ones not locked).

Word of mouth is what made Android popular to begin with and is far more powerful than any PR campaign (just look at Apple fans and how much they preach their iCrap and look how it works). HTC with from an unknown company themselves to a huge phone maker with more or less with google's blessing (and google as far as I know wants you to mod your phone).

Moto wasn't exactly doing awesome before android, but it was a far larger company than HTC was. HTC unlike moto doesnt have a history of really being arrogant, not listening to customers and assuming that if they keep releasing the same thing a billion times with small changes, it will still sell like it did before (the razr). Moto shoots themselves in the foot constantly and will continue to do so. They're lucky they built the first droid or they would most likely be dead in the water as a company.

A locked down android phone isn't much better than an iphone and sort of defeats the purpose of android to begin with. "Rooting your android" isn't exactly a common thing yet for people to know about, but looking at some of the clueless people (i mean that in the best of ways, not so much of an insult) that wander into xda lately, it's obviously becoming more so than ever before. If you tell someone you "rooted" your android phone they might not know what you mean, but if you use the very bad analogy that you "jailbroke it," far more people will get what you mean even if it isn't exactly correct. Point is, rooting will finally catch on in the mainstream world soon enough (I mean it took like a year for the local news here to "discover" angry birds, lol [they just did a news broadcast on it the other way sadly]).

Although no one can exactly say for sure, but I am sure HTC employees hang around on xda (at least some developers) and review third party development of their phones for future things to incorporate or remove from them (as well as free beta testing of obviously broken leaks). It would be dumb for them not to do so when it's all right there for them. If they lock it down, they lose something they would have to go and pay for themselves and might also be biased data. Anyways you cant assume that "leaks" are all just about altruism. The fact something gets leaked without any recourse would imply it was leaked most likely with approval. Same thing with the so called "insiders" that post on blogs about things that would look questionable to talk about from a corporate standpoint; It's sort of like a form of "astroturfing" only in a better way than what most companies do (since it's actually useful).

Moto could take a few cues from outside development, since obviously they have no clue how to develop a framework on their phones (looking at moto blur). Not saying Sense is perfect, but it could be far far worse.