corporate backers of freebsd

Good Day All and Happy New Year,

I'm not looking to incite anyone, but here comes a BSD vs Linux
question. Yes, I tried searching the archives and found nothing.

I used FreeBSD back in 2000 for a few firewalls, but due to certain
influences I switched to Linux after a couple of years.

I'm interested in getting back to the BSD's but have just one big concern.

As most users Unix and it's clones, I prefer the "free as in beer"
licensing model, but want to know that someone else is paying the big
bills.

In short, here's my question:

Canonical, RedHat, IBM, Novell, and a slew of others are funding /
supporting Linux development and pushing some of that development into
the free community, so that all can benefit from full-time developers
and the money that supports them.

I've seen where Cisco and Juniper are using FreeBSD, and assuming
there are other big names, do they directly fund or contribute to the
community?

I guess my big concern is that I'd like for development to continue,
with new features and hardware being supported. The best way for this
to happen, IMHO, is for the developers to have full time jobs
essentially devoted to FreeBSD and that some, if not most of that work
is then sent back to the community.

I'm not saying that I should contribute nothing, as I have contributed
cash via CD's, T-Shirts, and other venues, but that doesn't provide
nearly the revenue that a good corporate backer can.

And just to throw more gasoline on the fire, I'll also assume that the
BSD's are going strong and that there are no concerns of them suddenly
disappearing if I make the change over.

If you made it this far, thanks for your time in reading it.

dg
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