You misunderstand what happened. Some open source software still had more restrictive licensing, but most corporations opted not to use it, often because they simply couldn't and still operate legally, and thus, the software was less supported and less used software died out.
When companies couldn't find free software to use, they just wrote it themselves, typically, unless it was something big and way outside their domain.
Rather than being beholden to a licensing agreement, it would be nice if OSS had a license for an "enterprise-level donation" that was mandatory for for-profit use. It would be a one-time cost, so it would be easier to push through the accountants at lots of big companies, and companies could feel free to use the software at their leisure. Authors/contributors could choose to charge another fee for upgrading to a new major version, opt to end support of an old version or not and so on and so forth.
When companies couldn't find free software to use, they just wrote it themselves, typically, unless it was something big and way outside their domain.
Rather than being beholden to a licensing agreement, it would be nice if OSS had a license for an "enterprise-level donation" that was mandatory for for-profit use. It would be a one-time cost, so it would be easier to push through the accountants at lots of big companies, and companies could feel free to use the software at their leisure. Authors/contributors could choose to charge another fee for upgrading to a new major version, opt to end support of an old version or not and so on and so forth.