I'm fine with them releasing the source after the chip is out (why would I need the driver before the chip is out?!) - just not 3 years later, like they're basically doing with Tegra 2 drivers now.
You need the driver before the chip is out so that your favorite distro already supports it when you buy that new GPU card.
Why can't you ship a basic driver with the kernel that is guaranteed to work with all modern video cards, and then have a website download board specific driver when it comes out? (i.e. the current situation on windows anyway)