zlacker

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.

>>Doctor+(OP)
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.