It's the ONE reason why I probably might never get rid of my Motorola Droid. It's been such a pleasant experience to root it, replace the firmware and the CyanogenMod image is almost entirely built from scratch using the Google open-source Android project source code. If we can get CyanogenMod (which looks VERY likely, from what I'm seeing and reading), then we're home free and independent of this kind of bullsheit. This is like a car manufacturer welding your hood closed (so once it's used up its life and dies, or ever needs fixing--you're screwed) and putting locks on the gas tank that only the manufacturer can open so that you depend on their brand of petrol. I really had high hopes for Samsung to be better than Motorola but this is truly disappointing.
No. Samsung is not charging carriers for Froyo updates to Galaxy S. We hope to have more detail on status shortly. Promise!