companies contributing to X [was: Re: Respository vandalism by root at ...fd.o]

[Matt Dew]

> But you also might want to consider that i was at a hardware vendor two
> weeks ago, and i had to listen to their main engineer calling
> contributing directly to X a waste of time, and that they rather fix
> the versions their customers ship, and hand the patches to their
> customers directly, never bothering to submit to X directly. They rather
> implement stuff, hand it to their customers, as they know that their
> code will not be accepted, and that it will be reinvented a few weeks or
> months later. Then they go and use the reimplementation afterwards, and
> save a lot of manpower and frustration in the process. Despite all my
> personal feelings about free software and the likes, I had absolutely
> nothing to counter, anything i could even try to throw up against that
> would either be completely irrelevant and meek, or a lie.

This I'm curious about.   Are there more companies that feel it's
too-hard/not-worth-while for companies to contribute stuff to Xorg?
I know the linux kernel has this issue, but is X's contribution
difficulty larger?

I ask out of complete curiosity, not trying to stir any pot.
Matt