I think you need to be very careful when talking about 'paying back as much as you get'. It is very easy to underestimate even what a small contribution is worth. If somebody improves the kernel then that fix potentially benefits millions. The correct measure of contribution is not simply how much of the code base was improved but that multiplied by how many people it benefited. For clearly it is absurd to expect a company to contribute back the value it received to countless other people. Such a thing would be contributing millions of times more than you received.

Anyway that is how I would look at it. Measure benefit to the company as number of lines of code* used multiplied by the number of deployments. Measure contributions by a similar measure of number of lines contributed multiplied by the number of people using it. It is clear that even tiny amounts of contributions can easily outstrip what you've used yourself.

*I realise that LOC is not a good measure in practice. The concept still stands though. It is work contributed multiplied by the number of times it is used that matters in both directions.

Does it run Lotus Notes?

These are facts and thus have no place here on Slashdot. Somebody should censor this post.

Don't be silly. We'd have those Godwin's law quoting Nazi's dominating the thread then.

I assure you I am perfectly healthy.

Irate Chairthrowing Ballistic Missile?

When will SCO surpass Sun? Who else has the brilliant plan of charging $699 for something other people are giving away for free. Imagine it, SCO are making that much more for every copy of Linux they shift.

Surely this unique and exciting business plan of charging more than the opposition must eventually pay dividends.

What do you think these calls for change were! You cannot change a proprietary program.

Obama will bring change. IDE time outs will end. Gnome will be half way functional. NetworkManager will stop dropping my wireless signal.

Change is coming my friends and I for one welcome our change bringing overlord.

I'd say it's had a huge impact. A lot of anti-corporate types have bleated on about it, consistently hoping to hell that it has an impact as proof of the evilness of allowing corporations into our FOSS world. I've had a lot of headaches reading the repetitiveness.

As it is the deal is irrelevant. All it has done is proven many have a capacity to shoot themselves (and those around them) in the foot. The only real damage has been done by our own. Of course MS knew that people would go off the deep end, which is the impact they hoped for. Makes the community look immature and that has the potential to scare off pointy headed types.