It was a pipe dream, because at the end of the day not everything can be a side job, to compete against those that spend at least 8h day producing code.

Then the whole issue with non-copyleft licenses, that are nothing other than the old Whateverware or Public Domain licenses from the 16 bit home computer days.

We already had access to source code back then.

And for a large crowd this is already good enough, they aren't into it for religious definitions.