We asked camera companies why their RAW formats are all different and confusing

Raw decoding is not as simple as you might think.

It’s the best place to add “signature steps.” Things like noise reduction, chromatic aberration correction, and one-step HDR processing.

I used to work for a camera manufacturer, and our Raw decoder was an extremely intense pipeline step. It was treated as one of the biggest secrets in the company.

Third-party deinterlacers could not exactly match ours, although they could get very good results.

Raw decoding is an algorithm, not a container format. The issue is every is coming up with their own proprietary containers for identical data that just represents sensor readings.

It's more than just a file format.

The issue is that companies want control of the demosaicing stage, and the container format is part of that strategy.

If a file format is a corporate proprietary one, then there's no expectation that they should provide services that do not directly benefit them, or that expose internal corporate trade secrets, in service to an open format.

If they have their own format, then they don't have to lose any sleep over stuff that doesn't interest or benefit them.

pretty sure they would lose a lot of sleep if no third party application could open their raw

You'd be surprised.

They lost sleep over having images from their devices looking bad.

They wanted ultimate control of their images, and they didn't trust third-party pipelines to render them well.

so you think they'd be all happy if nobody could open the raw files in adobe software?