There are definitely management types that see "free" software as "I can't yell at the vendor if something goes wrong." I've seen this many times in government contracts. It's a CYA move IMHO. Even if the vendor is never going to fix the bugs you find, you can at least blame them for not delivering on time.

Of course it's even more silly when you consider that you're never going to be making patches to Maya, so in theory nothing is lost on the Blender side here.