It's a bit silly. That's like saying a lot of capital is going into proprietary plumbing and society would benefit if more people could make use of it. The software is implicitly linked to the people and processes.

Open source software development absolutely has a purpose. Licensing absolutely has a purpose. But generalization is a well-known cost for those in tech, and marketing is a well-known cost at general.

I don't think that anyone is claiming that there aren't tradeoffs. You seem to agree that there are times when licensing provides a benefit to society that outweighs the cost of generalization. I don't think it's silly to suggest that companies aren't always in the best position to weigh their own costs against the larger benefits to society.