I can absolutely root my phone. I just worry about things like the issue I detailed with my iPhone. I do think rooting is much easier than before, and there are still warnings in every forum I look at that indicate "if your phone explodes, don't blame us!"
I think it is a reasonable expectation that if I have a two year contract when I buy this phone that there should be a responsibility to upgrade that phone, and six months after the OS has been released seems out of bounds.
I don't agree about this being easy to research before purchasing the phone. When I purchase a Samsung Galaxy, is this the S? Is this some other Galaxy? Would this process work for rooting: http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/2271-how-to-root-your-andro.... (It does not by the way.) When I was at Google I/O they said there were sixty devices shipping with Android, and I am sure there are more now. It is actually non-trivial to keep all these details in your head unless that is what you want to do all day. I simply want to use my phone, and without Android 2.2 I am unable to use tethering, front facing camera for a bunch of apps, etc.
You bought a locked-down, rights-stealing, consumer phone that is made for people who don't know better. You should totally know better. :-)
In brief -- if you don't want the reference Google Developer phone (soon to be released Nexus 2 / S perhaps? Right now Nexus One), root your phone, and install cyanogenmod.
I'm reminded reading the linked article that oh, say, four years ago, phone OS'es never updated, with the possible exception of Nokia's higher end E-series. Today, with a hacked Android phone, you could install nightly builds off the Android Open Source Project Trunk if you chose.
This is a big difference, and is something the poster can in fact do with his Samsung Galaxy S. So, why the complaining? All this is easily discoverable with some research before purchase of the phone.