I think you misinterpreted his point. It's not that he can't give Mathematica away as it stands now. His point is more that Mathematica couldn't be developed

I think you misinterpreted his point. It's not that he can't give Mathematica away as it stands now. His point is more that Mathematica couldn't be developed as a free and open project with just contributions from random people. The point he doesn't mention is that it costs money to develop it closed source, and giving away the source (or even the binary) would cut off funding. I'm obliged to agree with him, since there isn't anything free that comes close to Mathematica.