Wait. Not sure if I understand you correctly here. As far as I can tell, keeping stuff closed source is one of the biggest reasons people like SaaS model (you can't even in principle have Stallman-style free software in SaaS model), another big reason being full control over access and user data. I'm not sure how he was a key impetus behind that - in fact, all of his teachings were strongly against this, but people ignored it and now here we are.
I believe the insinuation is that GNU, GPL, and FOSS forces the hands of many organisations that would traditionally release closed source software. Additionally it proposes that if it is not open source, an open source alternative will quickly begin competing with it.
