[freedomben]

In our case, the business value was that it was a contractual clause with a customer. The idea was that keeping a million dollar customer and spending weeks refactoring was cheaper than losing the customer and getting sued for breach of contract. So we're probably in a similar boat as block chain like you mention.

However, I think you underestimate the value of open source. Besides being the right thing to do (respects freedom, allows developers who built it to use their code later in line with license agreement, allows others to learn by contributing or at least reading, plus many other benefits) it can be a powerful recruiting tool. There's real business value in getting good hires.