Cash, promotion, merchandise, landscape subscription, bug reports, forum help (I have over 3000 posts on Ubuntu forums), stackoverflow, testing to name a few...

And Mark with his millions out of pocket to invest in a company he believes in. If they were votes, he wins.

Do the capitalist thing and stop giving them money if you hate it ohsomuch.

I doubt it. Much as myself, I wouldn't invest without expecting a sensible return.

I did stop giving about 2 months ago and poured it all into debian.

Now I'm doing the capitalist thing of whinging about how my investment was misused.