> I don't understand why that requirement causes such great alarm among
> the advocates of BSD-style "freedom."  Why does anyone really care
> whether or not it's distasteful to a commercial organization which
> might want to hide the source?

Because that, exactly, is what the advocates of BSD-style freedom care
about.  They _want_ to allow thrid parties to 'hide' the source.  Why
that is may be a personal issue; i'm sure there are lots of common
answers, but i'm not going to provide them (even to cover myself).

> How much active support of the project
> actually results from such organizations creating derivative works
> which are later released back to the project?

An amount that is significant, in my opinion.  (I've been a part of
such an effort, personally, and I know that at least a few active,
contributing developers have been as well.)

Sometimes that support comes in the form of patches to fix elusive
bugs and stabilize the system further.  Sometimes it comes in the form
of new hardware support.  But it _does_ come.


cgd
(not speaking for Digital.)