Both can be true. There was incentive to prevent people from building, repairing, and modifying things. It need not be malicious with the intent to prevent people from getting into the field. Instead it only need be naïve and selfish. Sony suing because people put Linux on their PS3. Remember these people will also try to sue white hat hackers who submit vulnerability reports. It's not a long term plan to destroy, instead it's an extremely short sighted and naïve plan to build a wall and protect.
You'll find that naïve shortsightedness often is indistinguishable from malicious foresight, when looked back upon. So remember how to stop it: think of the little things, the compounding effects. There's always costs and trades being made, there's no free lunch. As the world gets more advanced it gets more complex. The more complex it gets the more those little subtle things matter