[almet]

It really seems they're trying to get things right, but are afraid of the competition. In my opinion this is because the company and the product is new to the market. Once they know that their income isn't tied to them being closed-source, they might change their position on this, or they will keep their customer locked-up because they're afraid of them running away.

This seems to be missing the point : Freedom for the users on one side, and sharing knowledge on the other side.

Here you have neither of the two and the only reason is fear. If your startup isn't successful and you have open-sourced your code, it's probably not because of the competition using your code, but because you're not solving a problem that people need to be solved.