This basically seems to be a case of Tesla truly opening up their connector standard, marrying it with the existing standardized CCS communications instead of their previous proprietary communications, and using the carrot of access to their charging network to get other manufacturers onboard for the North American market.

There are some governmental pressures to use interoperable connectors used by multiple brands if you want to be eligible for federal infrastructure EV charger funding. Tesla is making themselves eligible for this funding, making sure they won't be legislated into changing all of their charge connectors to CCS1 in the future, and gaining new customers to improve profitability of their charger network.

Tesla is by far the fastest growing DC charging provider in the US, on track to build over 500 stations this year with each station being 8+ chargers, some with 40 or more chargers.

No, I don't think so, they really did open up the standard.

Where Tesla makes money is when people with those cars go to charge at the Tesla superchargers.

To the best of my knowledge, it is a royalty-free, truly open standard. And it is probably the reason why other manufacturers started to use it.

Tesla most likely saw the writing on the wall, standardization was inevitable, it is already the case in Europe. They have a lot to gain if that standard is theirs, so they opened it. Everybody wins, especially considering that it is also a pretty good connector. I'd say that the only drawback is that it is not the same as in Europe, but since cars rarely cross the Atlantic, it is not a big deal.