And the shades in between account for the large number of new licensing schemes sprouting, with different restrictions on what is and isn't possible. (Not to mention the large number of "just used it anyways" instances). And it struggles for smaller utilities, or packages of many different things.

It's "worked out" in the sense that it still doesn't really work for a lot of maintainers.

What happens when the code is abandoned? Can I make my own changes whenever I want?

The problem with commercial software is the lock in.