It indeed takes time to build and release. I should have been more specific that I meant the orders of magnitude more time, 6 months, it can take to get a new minor version from the vendor, vs 6 hours from a kid working on a Saturday night building a major release.

The volunteer worked a non-zero amount of time. Thanks for pointing it out! I'll make sure to carefully guard my language in the future for fear of being unclear.

No worries, I assumed that was what you meant, and I completely agree with your main point. I got a droid after my iPhone 3, and I don't think I'll be getting another android phone because of this problem.

Custom ROMs don't always follow spec, and often break apps, causing more fragmentation, so clearly this is not a full solution.