[jim]
> I offered money and free beer (as in free beer) to the maintainers of the
> code base. They were not interested.

But did you offer it to the community?

That's something it's possible to do with FOSS, but impossible with
closed source.

> At least with proprietary code-based busineses you have a barganing chip -
> your business. They fix it or lose you as a stream of revenue. With FOSS,
> you don't even have that.

I tend to disagree - you bought the software once, and the company
already got their revenue. Or you're just a tiny insignificant part
of the revenue stream. Point out some bugs in Microsoft Excel, and I'd
daresay the likelihood of a quick fix is quite small. As long as the
bug isn't significant for a significant part of the customer base,
it's not even likely that it ever will get fixed.

--
Tobias Brox, 69°42'N, 18°57'E