This shows you just do not understand either free or open source software. Plenty of companies in open source are "private companies compelled to compete in a free market." Indeed, this describes nearly all the money that drives open source development. Red Hat isn't running a charity. Neither is Google.

RMS is as fundamental as they come and even he has no objection to selling software.

People are taking insult from what you say because you misrepresent their position.

"This shows you just do not understand either free or open source software." - Please. Read my comment above for clarity on my position. If you reject ALL proprietary software based on ideology, I think it's fair to say you have a fundamentalist position.

We looked into open source models and couldn't find one that made financial sense for us.

Red Hat is the only truly Open Source company, and it's an important part of their branding.

Google contributes to FOSS super strategically and absolutely no "magic sauce" is FOSS.

What's not to like indeed? With FLOSS you get access to rewrite the code to suit your needs, independence from the provider, possibility to create as many copies as needed (no volume licensing)...

And most importantly, a guarantee that any paid investment to improve the code will be available in the future, no matter what happens to the original provider company. If you pay for closed source instead, the company going bankrupt may convert those investments into sunk cost.

You don't seem to understand that, by being closed source, your product lacks all those desirable properties. Having a strong desire for those benefits which disqualifies any product not complying with them, seems perfectly rational, it's just that they have a different balance of values and benefits from yours, which apparently only value the provided features.

Those traits are desirable, but not essential for most of our users. I still maintain that rejecting ALL proprietary software is a fundamentalist position. The purpose of software is to do a job - to add value on your behalf or on behalf of a company. Although a FLOSS philosophy should factor into the equation when choosing software, it is unlikely that it should be the primary consideration (although there are cases where it could be). If you simply rule out proprietary software on principle, you are doing your company or yourself a disservice. You are failing to extract the best 'work done' from yourself or your colleagues because of an ideology. Hence the use of the word 'fundamentalist'.

I do understand that by being closed source, our software lacks the desirable properties you have mentioned. But we have not been able to find an open source model that makes financial sense for our company.