Motivation for contribution to libre software projects instead of free-riding

We have tried and emphasize the strategy that organisations can adopt with respect to the maintainability of the in-house applications based on libre software, in a previous paper. We profess that contribution is in no way mandatory, and free-riding is definitely possible for users of libre software. But at the same time, contribution to upstream projects may be one best way to ensure parts of the maintainance effort can be “outsourced” upstream. Still, it may not be an easy task anyway. For instance, it can be difficult to weight on the decisions of upstream developers and have your modifications integrated in the codebase.
It seems that we’re not the only one to have published on this idea recently. Similar arguments are given by by Kris Ven, Herwig Mannaert and Jan Verelst of University of Antwerp (Belgium), according to the presentation they have made at Calibre’s FOSDEM room : Participation of Independent Software Vendors in free and open source software projects (they also published a paper on the same subject). They argue from the standpoint of ISVs instead of an organisation who wants to use libre software for in-house needs, which was our case. But actually I was not much convinced that this were not two similar situations actually. Even though they may have developped the product as an ISV, that seems to be somehow a very custom-made product, and not one product used by so many different and generic entities. Maybe other cases of ISVs publishing more generic products may be more interesting to add to their point. Still, I’m sure that’s a very good finding anyway. I’ll try to keep an eye on bibliography for such pleas for contribution.