Thanks for posting @kaspar, what a great response.
Some context for those who haven’t followed: Prusa Research, a famous and well-regarded maker of (largely) open source 3D printers, had a blog post recently where they are considering using non-open source licenses for their future products. From what I can tell, a major reason for this is a fear of clones that “undercut” them and don’t “give back”. The post that @kaspar linked to is a response to that, which argues that it’s actually even more important for the products in question to remain fully open source hardware.
This came up in the interviews I recently did regarding research culture. Sadly I’m not aware of a “solution”, but can really relate to it.
Closing products would make more sense if they are looking for more traditional investments, like Opentrons seems to have done.
Wait, are Opentrons products closed source now??? 
P.S. I like the structure and overall tone of this post by Stargirl Flowers, being clear on points of agreement and disagreement, and overall respectful dialogue.