I believe our perspectives change when - surprise surprise! - we get older. We start thinking about making a living with open source, rather than just giving all our time away. As a person who has literally stood in food bank lines because of open source, I'd like to call this "sustainable" open source. When you feel you *must* make money to continue the exercise, you get more creative and intelligent about monetizing open source.
Unfortunately the reality is many business models are *not* going to make any money on pure open source, such as slapping a GPL on computer games not tethered to the internet. So you adopt hybrids and keep parts of your business closed. I do not believe businesses have to make an all-or-nothing decision, and this ideology puts me on the MIT/BSD side of licensing debates. I'll give away whatever makes sustainable economic sense to give away.
Why was the company ailing? Why blame it on unions and not demand?