> Whose job would it be to maintain all of the compatibility layers for the custom hardware that consoles generally contain?.

The community's? I don't think anyone expects the vendor to officially support anything other than the OS it ships with. We just want the option to use our own software on the hardware we purchased.

> Who pays for all the work to allow you to do whatever you want on your device?.

Surely it's more work to go the extra mile to restrict access?