Quote - they may be able to do it. perhaps it would help them if ya told 'em why ya wanted all surfaces to have the "gather" node.

will do-- the gather node enables the Global illumination solution . . . eg a surface with a gather node "looks" to the scene for ambient light, not just to the identified light sources. Firefly doesn't have the world's fastest GI solutions but its good enough, and less work than hauling the scene into some other app.