Re: Look in the mirror first
"if you are old enough to remember a world before ANY source code was publicly available to build anything from."
Your post might have been better without that sentence.
How long have you been in the business? And your colleagues?
I'm just wondering if you're aware that computers existed before Wintel infected the world, that some computer companies in those days used to have user groups, and that the user groups often used to distribute software (often for cost of media only - this was before the Internet, imagine that). Software was often distributed in source form for the user to compile. Even if the software was free to acquire, it was not always free to modify and restribute.
One example of this which might have some visibility amongst those who are aware of the pre-Wintel era might be Tanenbaum's Amsterdam Pascal, from back in the 1980s. Its successor is still around, as a retargetable compiler capable of running on multiple hosts and multiple host OSes. Sound familiar? Well this one's now called The Amsterdam Compiler Kit.
The user group which I was most familiar with back in the 1970s and 1980s was DEC's user group, DECUS (RIP). Some of what they distributed is now online at www.decuslib.com Other vendors may well have had their own user groups.
TL;DR: With all due respect to RMS, widely distributed freely available source code you can compile yourself was NOT a Stallman invention.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
