The original point was for users to be able to fix bugs in the software they were using, no? You can frame that as good for ideological reasons (users should have the freedom to solve their own problems), as Free Software does, or good for pragmatic reasons (if users can scratch their own itches then this will result in better software), as Open Source does. But in either case, SaaS undermines it: the user may be able to download a copy of the source and fix the bug that was bothering them, but they still have to live with the bug in the version of the software they're actually using.
This ultimately becomes incentive for the SaaS provider to do a much better job. The most basic level of SaaS is simply OpenSourceApp as a service where devops, upgrades, security, logging and such just work... We use 5-6 different SaaSified services to deliver our product and honestly, it's fantastic versus maintaining more servers and network infrastructure.
No, it just creates options... in this case, one of them is paying someone to make it work and make it reliable so I can focus on the things that make my product different and special. Regardless, I wouldn't be in business without free and open source software...
The motivation for Linux was definitely about the inability to fix bugs, but I'm pretty sure the same cannot be said about the motivations and reasoning behind the GPL.
The short version: RMS worked at AI lab who had a laser printer. It jammed a lot so he wanted to fix the code, but he could not because the code was non-free. His inability to fix the printer, despite having programming skill to do so, was stymied because Xerox wouldn't let the AI lab have the source code. To add injury to insult, the person at Xerox that told him no was a previous student at the same university, who basically said that he could not give them a copy because he had signed a NDA.
That is the original motivations and reasoning behind the GPL. To prevent that situation from happening and allow the programmer to fix the bug in the code.
