There's a kind of person who makes 6 or 7 digit purchasing decisions for proprietary software when an open source solution would have sufficed. Because they make stupid decisions, they need a psychological defense mechanism to feel good about their decisions. These people are stuck in the 90s and believe that proprietary software is, as a rule, of higher quality than open source software. So to them, "proprietary" signals "quality". "Proprietary Algorithm? Must be so good they need to keep it a secret!" And actually, that's true for a lot of industries. FOSS has changed web development for the better, but there's plenty of other industries that just don't have that. Just compare Octave with Matlab, or Sage with Mathematica, or Blender with Maya, etc...