They still have a system for sponsoring students (through professors). They're not entirely crazy.

It does make me wonder how much money they must be losing on these chips that they've turned this desperate for licensing costs.

Yes, but that’s resistance for potential users they can’t afford if they ever want adoption on the level of CUDA.

Usually it's just some idiot manager trying to juice quarterly numbers and get promoted. Then they jump to another company and the damage takes years to kick in.

They have learnt... very slightly more than nothing from CUDA.