I gladly pay for free software, and donate to several groups of developers developing free software. Maybe I'm in the minority, but at least I stick to my principles -- free software for me is about freedom (I contribute to many projects that I use every day, which I wouldn't be able to do without free software). Price is irrelevant.
In addition, I work for a free software company -- everything I work on is done in the open and all of our customers have freedom when they use our software. So I really do practice what I preach, and encourage others to follow suit.
Philosophically speaking, maybe. In practise though, free software are considered because of pricing and not freeness.
Bring a PAID open-source software for a comparison in front of your directors and/or fellow engineers. I did that many times, from $1000/year to $3M/year subscription.
Even the most open-source aficionados will quickly reveal that he doesn't care about open-source. All he thinks about is pricing.