What kind of relation between hardware companies and the Xfree project

Hello,

I'm just an end-user of X and following with interest the discussion  going 
on. One aspect that differentiate the Xfree project with KDE or Gnome is the 
potential  participation of hardware companies to Xfree

In his call for a renewed Xfree, Keith Packard talked about including in the 
Xfree community :

* Consulting companies selling services based on X.
 * Hardware vendors producing hardware to work with X.

How should it be done ? Could Keith Packard and the different members of 
Tungsten Graphics elaborate on this ? 

- Should hardware companies enticed to work directly in Xfree CVS or only 
through buffer companies (Tungsten, Red Hat, etc..) employing hackers ? 
- Without revealing business secrets, is there already a healthy business 
selling services around Xfree ? 
- Are they steps that could be done to make Xfree more friendly for hardware 
companies without loosing the open source spirit ?

What are your opinions on these topics ?

Cheers,
Charles