[ShabbyDoo]

What's the disadvantage of openness for Canon? It's not like the firmware was limiting features as a way of artificially segmenting the market, so they're not losing revenue because of circumvented price discrimination. Presuming that there are controls outside the firmware's control which prevent hardware damage (and therefore warranty claims), what's the issue with limiting customer service and warranty claims to only issues experienced with the standard firmware?

Why not go a step further and ship the camera with a grandma-friendly firmware but host an open source community which provides various Canon-curated firmware versions? What could be done to make Canon's cameras suitable for even more cool hacks? How could this not sell cameras? Those most trusted by non-techies to recommend products surely would hold more favorable opinions of those cameras as a result.