Draconian has jumped the shark.

The idea that this or any other restriction that apple has placed on developers was going to seriously impede iPhone or AppStore sales is fairly silly. Real developers (unlike forum posters) follow money more than they follow ideology.

Nevertheless, this is clearly a good decision. The costs of this policy (though not as large as some people made them out to be) were probably bigger than the benefits, just because the benefits are probably far smaller than Apple imagined. Individual features of the iPhone will eventually be copied no matter what apple does legally. But Apple has done a good job of creating an overall "ecosystem" that makes it very difficult for anyone to compete with the whole package of iPhone + app store + iTunes.

Companies that have the resources and morals/intent to "rip off" Apple would have no problem getting an SDK. The NDA was always a PR/control thing (and still is for new features.)