Yes it's incredibly difficult for someone to understand something if their salary depends on not understanding it. It's important to note that Linux would likely not exist if PC makers had used the same lockdown methods as used today.

Moreover when GKH and Linus talk about how GPL enforcement has done nothing good, they conveniently leave out the success of WRT enforcement, which caused one of the biggest Linux offshoots, largely based on volunteer work.

Finally, the audacity of saying "let's talk about legal things without lawyers present" is such a typical software engineer thing, just imagine the reaction someone was proposing to talk about kernel programming without any kernel programmers present