Competition is always a great thing...something GW lacks IMO. There is only one license for LotR wargaming and they hold it. Kinda hard to IP historicals though.
I have only been playing FoW for a couple years now but haven't seen codex creep issues at all so far. There's the simple fact that things really did improve for the most part as time went by, so even forces that deployed 6 months later than others may show improvements or even a weakening of forces. It's not as visible in Early and Mid-War but really starts to show in Late War, especially post-Normandy. And the latest version of the rules cleaned up a few game play issues I had seen.
But at no point does FoW try to present themselves as a 'serious simulation' of WWII. It's a game with WWII flavor just as SBG is a game with Middle-Earth flavor. SBG simplifies a lot of things for playability purposes to keep things fun and moving along while catching the flavor of the subject. FoW is much the same.
But with all that aside I was not discussing the game systems themselves. I was pointing out how open the FoW developers are to their community compared to GW. Their developers can be found on their forum active in discussions where GW's 'rule question' process is a black-box email from which you may never hear anything. They are open to players using competitors models even at their official tournaments (just restricted from painting/army competitions and official photos) vs. the draconian stance of GW on such things. And I have seen a few times (like the one that spurred this message) where Battlefront has actively reached out to their player base at large regarding THE PLAYER's opinion on rule options BEFORE making something official.
So not saying "FoW is the ultimate WWII wargame!". Just saying Battlefront is a far more open and engaged development company than GW, which promotes players (at least our local ones) to be willing to play their game, buy their products and promote to others.