Why would the source of the patches be less trusted than the source of (updated) kernels? I expect it to be the same, your distro.
$200/year is peanuts for any commercial use worth the name. The problem, of course, is the whole non-free infrastructure it has to introduce.
I wonder when large and critical OSS projects will start to be seen as a public good they are, with large corporations willingly financing them because not doing so is bad PR.
Public goods are not generally funded by large corporations.
Errr.. are you saying that Linux contributors are only affiliated to small companies or volunteers? Well, last time I checked, some contributors were RedHat(IBM) and Microsoft employees ;)