A huge number of people and businesses ostensibly benefit from these projects, and the vast majority are freeriders that contribute nothing to their development.
Obviously, that can't be talking about people that submit bug reports and suggestions.
but not much to do at home besides watch TV.
There are lots of interesting and/or frustrating problems to work on at home too. If TV's all you can come up with, then you aren't even trying. My work is within a fairly constrained field. I have a lot of ideas for things that I don't have the opportunity to do at work, and when one becomes sufficiently interesting, I find time to write it at home instead.
I go to work to do the things that my employer wants done. I go home and do the things that I want to do. It works out nicely.
I think that they should just focus on helping people come to a deep and intuitive understanding of how and why the math works. Sadly, they go for the rote memorization route instead.
Rote memorization gave me a list of facts to play around with in my head, and it became the basis of the mental math that I use now. If we studied math without using numbers, then I can see how the memorization would've been unnecessary. Then again, I don't see that having a practical application in most people's lives, since concrete numbers are all that people generally deal with. In any case that comes to mind, learning math itself isn't directly useful, while learning arithmetic most definitely is.
Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one you are least interested, and say nothing about the other.