There are no consumer protection laws for businesses. There is no cooling off period for certain contracts. Businesses are supposed to have the legal wherewithal to protect their own interests.
You can't project our social norms to businesses.
Companies aren’t people, they are social constructions which can, or not, have positive or negative impact on the society but ultimately live for making money. And I don’t mean this as an insult, it’s just that if you want to work with other people with other goals than making money, a company is just the wrong structure. I think it’s crucial to stop that belief that companies have souls. Companies souls are what is wrote in their status, nothing more, nothing less.
Generally speaking, these constructs are created to solve problems an individual may have trouble with.
The constructs have no agency. They must act through people and are directed by people, but are not people.
Perhaps we should treat corporations like people and jail them, like we do people.
What would that look like?
Freeze all assets for a period of time? Or, since they are essentially shields for those directing them, maybe remove the shield part for X period of time...
There are additional and unwritten obligations in everything, that's just what a culture is. And open source culture has always relied on a general goodwill extended to strangers, it is what keeps it alive. If we only abide by the letter of the law and take as much as we can and give as little as possible open source is just dead, I mean you already see this with large open source contributors moving towards more restrictive licenses.
Saying that the conclusion of this is that licenses were too generous and that we ought to be suspicious of people because they take the underling ethos seriously is... strange to say the least.