There is 0.3mm of air between the base plate and the spinning impeller. Because this air gap is thin, wide and sheared (i.e, the top part is spinning and the bottom part isn't - so you get lots of convection), the thermal resistance of the air gap is actually very low.
Look at SQLite. It's used _everywhere_ these days. Their own list is only a small segment of it's pervasiveness. I'm a programmer for a large company, and I use it in internal software I develop as part of my job.
Has SQLite made the world a better place? Definitely.
Moreso than a GPL equivalent would have? Of course.
Have they got the full credit they deserve? Perhaps not.
Of course, BSD vs GPL is a matter of personal preference, but after all, how is using SQLite in a proprietary program any different from using Linux in proprietary hardware? I don't see a philosophical difference. It's not as if anyone is taking SQLite, modifying it, and selling their modified copy. Who'd buy it when SQLite is so good?
Cost/benefit is not a uniquely human attribute. When a big cat is hunting, it performs cost/benefit analysis on whether it's pray is worth chasing - based on the energy required to chase it down (cost) vs the amount of energy to be gained by eating it (benefit).
All animals do this, more or less.
A slow pup is a lazy dog. -- Willard Espy, "An Almanac of Words at Play"