If you charged money, that's something people can relate to. People understand the need to put food on the table. People even understand that jet skis are a lot of fun but they're not cheap. Money makes the world go around. So you could charge away with the full approval of every capitalist in the room.
But it's disappointing to see people hoarding knowledge in order to feel important. Guess what: there are nearly seven billion other people out there. A lot of them are smarter than you, at least in some way, no matter who you are. I'll bet that somewhere in those seven billion people, there is someone who could take your research and produce a product better than yours. (No insult intended -- the numbers are just against you.) If you only released the source. So you're holding the world back in order to feel good about yourself. It's still a relatable concept, but now it's a low, dark thing, and no longer morally defensible.
Perhaps the best compromise would be to sell it very cheaply. As a practical matter, a buck or two isn't much of a barrier to people who want to use your software, and if you spread a useful product far and wide, that still benefits humanity.
It seems like being misunderstood is what makes you angry and unhappy here - so switching to a model that people understand might be a relief! Remember why you started the project. Is your goal to prove people wrong about the value of free-but-not-open-source software, or is your goal to improve people's lives at a low cost? After all, there was already a cost to your software - the time cost of finding, evaluating, and installing it. That time cost, plus a buck or two, would not be a big increase in the real cost for end users.
And you could keep it your little secret if your 'business' runs in the red because you charge pennies on the dollar compared to what it's really worth.
Mahmoud, you're beginning to see the problem of bias, but there's a good
deal more to it. People like to believe they are secure, and hence, the
supposedly "technical" users like to believe they somehow vet their
software.
The truth of the matter is vastly different.
Can you name anyone who as actually done a security audit on every
single binary and source file they use?
In other words, the assurances people seek by paying for software are
fictitious from the start. The very same is true for open source
software.
When I was in school, I once needed to get a note from my parents to give to my gym teacher. My gym teacher asked if I had the note, and I said sure, and started to get it out. He told me not to bother, and trusted that it existed and was genuine.
You do have to remember that you are dealing with a very specific subset of the population here on this forum. I have lots of free but not open source software on my system (along side the paid and open source stuff).
I will say that technical users, such as myself and people here, are wary of installing random software on their computers. Most of the time, I'm not worried about malware or nagware but about wasting my time on product that doesn't work. But I've seen low quality paid software, low quality open source software, and low quality free software in equal measure.
But it's disappointing to see people hoarding knowledge in order to feel important. Guess what: there are nearly seven billion other people out there. A lot of them are smarter than you, at least in some way, no matter who you are. I'll bet that somewhere in those seven billion people, there is someone who could take your research and produce a product better than yours. (No insult intended -- the numbers are just against you.) If you only released the source. So you're holding the world back in order to feel good about yourself. It's still a relatable concept, but now it's a low, dark thing, and no longer morally defensible.