I wonder if these "commercial vendors" get bug fixes?

Or do the buyers of freeware products (which is often a good deal)
communicate directly with the authors if they want can fix bugs...

The quality of help from the author of a program is vastly different
than the "help" lines -- if someone can fix bugs in source, there's no
reason not to communicate directly with the author.

In fact, if the freeware redistributors get bug fixes, they probably
tell the fixers to communicate with the authors, not with them...

Which is one of the reasons I like source -- the quality of help 
available is much better than the "help lines".

marty