Even Sun has limits. They can hire engineers until the cost of that 
requires the prices of their products to rise above what their 
customers will pay. Also, investment in anything that doesn't have a 
direct effect on the bottom line in the short term (i.e. things that 
customers don't directly pay for, e.g. software tools, pretty 
installers, etc.) is always a hard sell to management, unless 
management is particularly enlightened and is willing to take the 
long view. And even then, you have those pesky shareholders to 
convince, particularly if you're a public company like Sun.

The most effective companies get things done that need to get done 
because those things directly affect their corporate survival, and in 
turn, the engineers will work on things that aren't all that 
glamorous because when management so directs, if they fail to 
perform, they will be fired, and thus they won't eat. Profit is quite 
the motivator, but it also constrains the list of things you'll work 
on.

Typically, the bigger the entity, the more distractions from the 
bottom line they can fund for a time, in the hope that one or more of 
them will be profitable in the future. However, when your markets are 
under attack, your margins are shrinking, and your customers are 
fleeing to cheaper hardware, you're less likely to spend precious 
cash on anything that won't have an immediate return.

We have the advantage of not having those pressures. However, our 
labor pool is entirely volunteer, generally cannot work full time on 
NetBSD, and just try to get a software engineer to deal with a 
problem he's doesn't care for during his time off from work...

	Erik <fair@netbsd.org>