I've talked to a lawyer informally.
He says that there can be legal recourse for some of our requests.
(it would require some organization work and money to hire a lawyer.)
however he says that even if we have lawyer the first step would be to have very solid documented proof about every specific request and pattern of IS ignoring those requests.
The bottom line is that we can save money and organize this step ourselves.
the next step would be requesting audit. (this would require money. We would probably need to get 400-500 contributors on board for this. The number isn't small, but not out of reach.)
Audit should reveal discrepancies between what they sell and what they report to us (and according to him it's almost guaranteed. At least from his experience there was no audit that wouldn't find at least something)
And then if are able to classify this as "class action suite" then they would settle, because at this point it would be much more expensive for them to go for actual trail.
What's important is, that although this issue isn't big - it can help us to form some sort of organizational representational structure, which later can be leveraged to renegotiate our standard contracts
That's may long term plan.
I agree with you that reporting is so hard to gather as to be useless, but I don't think it would make a difference to IS if every contributor e-mailed them hourly. This request can go on the list (which by now is scarily long) of all the things, promised or desired, that aren't being done.
Doing work on contributor tools represents a cost to them. They are busy trying to maximize their profit and control (minimize) costs. They no longer care what contributors think and I believe assume that for every disgruntled contributor who leaves, there are more out there who will contribute.
Sounds defeatist and disgruntled? Perhaps. I've been a contributor with IS since Fall 2004 and I'd say I'm just being realistic about the current situation.
As the old saying goes, save your breath to cool your porridge.