That’s a really uncharitable interpretation. Permissive licences were not a problem in the internet economy of 20 or even 10 years ago. The challenge now is that a very small number of internet companies - principally Amazon, Google and Facebook - have such market power that they can effectively co-opt permissively licensed products for their own ends. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago and probably not 10 years ago either.

In the golden age of comercial software you still could get the source, however it was part of the commercial version not the shareware/demoware one, or as additional option.

Naturally with a license that only allowed its use on the context of understanding the product, e.g. source code for the C and C++ libraries of a compiler for use in debugging sessions.

Corporations legal departments just found out a way to use non-copyleft licenses for the 2nd coming of shareware/demoware, while cutting down development costs in the process.

It's evolution. When we started Open Source, the corporate adoption we have today was inconceivable. The problem is much larger than just not liking a permissive license. It might be clearer if you listen to the talk.

They were told about the devil's pact they were doing regarding adoption, but since they were the same group that believed in company propaganda like do no evil, they went ahead anyway.