[pessimizer]

You mean the paid engineers at the proprietary mapping services, or those who use data from those proprietary mapping services? I don't understand the incentive that the former would have to release their tools, and since the latter wouldn't be working with OSM directly, wouldn't they be building tools to work with those other services?

A lot of paid engineers work with OSM now, don't we? Ever since google raised rates, OSM seems to be a big player.