Your request for free publication is undeniably idealistic. I think it is a perfectly reasonable compromise to provide specs under NDA to developers who have shown themselves to be productive and trustworthy in the past, e.g. by contributing to XFree86 or producing and supporting an own 3rd-party driver like Tungsten Graphics. It is a much less risky investment for the chip manufacturer than freely publishing documentation for all. The manufacturer will rarely reach any individuals who would not have qualified for a NDA anyway, and will most likely end up giving their competitors ideas they may not have had otherwise.
The problem is that none of the NDAs I have seen (which is not that many) explicitly give you the rights to release source code based on documentation on NDA. If you happen to work for a company that is extremely cautious about such legal issues, that means you don't get to sign any NDAs.
Personally (i.e., not speaking for my employer in any way) agree that it's reasonable for hardware vendors to release documentation under NDA. However, if they're releasing NDA documentation to developers for the purpose of creating open-source drivers, the NDA should explicitly give the developers that right.
Again, that's just this developer's personal opinion.
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