The reason I won't accuse Linus of not being open even though he doesn't support my feature-of-choice is because while he ditches my idea saying it is crap, he still gives me the source to mess with. So, I or a friend can make the change for me and I can be happy and content.
Here's another analogy : It's like Microsoft Studios talking about how the development team used a Linux based compile farm and testbed for their new game but nevertheless, the game itself won't run on Linux.
If Microsoft Studios released the sourcecode to any modifications they used, or even just documented the setup they used for that compilefarm, I'd be grateful for the contribution. Yeah, it's not as good as opensourcing the game and porting it to linux, bsd, solaris et all.. but it's still a contribution to the community that they had no need to make.
For the record, I was a netflix subscriber and canceled a long time ago because of inaccessibility of their instant video service--If it won't run on xbmc, I'm better off getting it somewhere else like amazon Prime. I even told them as much. I still appreciate them releasing all of this stuff though.
Netflix has to make business decisions on what platforms to support via which DRM technologies work for them and their Hollywood suppliers. I'm just thankful they still exist at all and I don't have to rent DVDs anymore.
They don't "owe" anyone anything. It's a for-profit company, and they're being generous with their infrastructure source.
Here's another analogy : It's like Microsoft Studios talking about how the development team used a Linux based compile farm and testbed for their new game but nevertheless, the game itself won't run on Linux.