We also should realize that much (most?) of the turmoil is caused by companies like Adobe who, for commercial reasons, force people to update the image editing software, because newer camera models are deliberately locked out. It is therefore no surprise that Adobe also offers a 'DNG solution' (for an issue they partially create themselves), which would benefit them by not having to interpret multiple Raw formats.
Your statement "for commercial reasons, force people to update the image editing software" is not correct...while there may indeed be a component of "commercial reasons" in Adobe's policy, there are substantial technical reasons as well. Aside from the Adobe policy of not updating software they no longer sell, the way software code is developed forces that sort of line in the sand. Both Camera Raw and Lightroom are software platforms that have substantial system level dependancies...
Camera Raw is a plug-in that lives inside the Photoshop plug-in SDK. Each version of Photoshop has it's own SDK that is dependent on the OS level APIs and services. Trying to maintain backwards compatibility of current and future ACR versions inside of past versions of Photoshop would require branching the code into current OS system support and previous OS system support. For Windows, that might not be an onerous burden, but for Mac it would be almost impossible because of fundamental and massive changes Apple has forced on developers over the years. Camera Raw first showed up in Photoshop 7. It would be impossible to port the current ACR to be able to work in Photoshop 7. In Photoshop CS3, Adobe had to migrate from Codewarrior to Xcode to support Universal Binaries that provided PPC/Intel dual support. In System 10.7, support for Rosetta was removed so nothing on OS 10.7+ can run any PPC code.
Just how would you suggest Adobe update previous versions of Camera Raw for current and future as yet, unreleased cameras? Reverse engineer them and go back to that original code and rewrite them to include these new cameras? How many versions of Photoshop and ACR should Adobe offer backwards compatibility for? One version? Three? How many code branches of Camera Raw should Adobe spawn off?
Looking at Lightroom, if Adobe wanted to offer backwards compatibility for previous versions of LR to open new and future cameras, they would have to maintain code branches for each and every version of LR that needed backwards compatibilities...
So, Thomas developed DNG as a method of providing backwards compatibility of new and future raw files for past versions of Camera Raw and Photoshop. With the proper DNG version preferences, users of previous version of ACR and LR can access and convert new raw files for backwards compatibilities. A user that has a camera only supported by ACR 7.4 can use DNG Converter 7.4 to make a compatible DNG that will open using ACR 2.4 in Photoshop CS or LR 1. Oh, and DNG Converter is free...
So, there are indeed real technical issues and yes, Adobe adopted the policy of updating only currently shipping application versions. Yes, there were financial reasons for that policy, but also valid and substantial technical reasons. If Adobe were to adopt a policy of backwards compatibility updates to previous versions of ACR/LR, it would take developmental resources away from current and new development. So, in effect, Adobe would deprive current/future customers for the benefit of previous customers. As a current customer, I would have a problem with that.
Interestingly, when you access a native raw in ACR or LR, the initial thing the ACR pipeline does is convert the native raw data to DNG data on the fly. I don't think this is a secret as I think Eric or Thomas has mentioned this before (if it wasn't, I'm sorry Eric and Thomas :~). The conversion of native data to DNG data is fundamental to ACR/LR's ability to parse the raw image data and associated metadata such as white point, ISO, camera data and lens data. So, it is somewhat ironic that some people who don't want to use DNG actually are using DNG every time they process their natives raws in ACR/LR. It's kinda yet another feather in the cap of Thomas Knoll.
So, no, I don't think it's proper to lay the blame for the current situation regarding undocumented, proprietary raw file formats the feet of Adobe (and other 3rd parties). The blame falls at the feet of the camera makers who eschew the use of any standardized raw file format and continue to propagate new raw file formats each time they release a new camera. And the situation will not improve until the camera companies quit doing that.