Wow that second link ("Reminiscences of the VLSI Revolution") turned out to be a 29 page rabbit hole providing a fantastic glimpse into the history and early days of chip design and engineering, thanks a lot for posting that! Here's a direct link to the PDF: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.69...
Things like "not sure" and "I think" and "even if I'm wrong" suggests that it is not very clear what is covered and what isn't. A lawyer would probably have to sort that out.
The practical problem is that some organizations simply discourage or don't allow the use of GPLv3 or AGPL software. I don't want to learn one tool for personal projects and another for potential work projects, in case the opportunity comes up.
The easiest way to deal with that is to just switch to a tool that has a license that is more widely accepted.
A while ago I was picking a new SSG and I would have preferred something written in Python so I can hack on it more easily. I ended up moving on because of the license.