Is there life without a source license?

[Steve Dempsey]

I'm looking for comments from people who have any experiences managing,
operating, or using 4BSD without the benefit of a source license.
This implies you don't have access to the sources through the underground.
What level of support did you receive from the binary license vender?
How were bugs handled?  What do you do when a new device must be added
to the kernel?  All comments, especially the very good and very bad ones,
will be appreciated.