Whether they'd care about licensing depends on whether software would still be subject to property regimes which could be enforced against machines. My first guess is that's very path dependent, and on the path we're on now, yes.

Whether they'd care about software freedom and what they'd consider that to be is orthogonal (but to the extent info property regimes persist, will presumably be twisted up in those, like today).and way more interesting. Some variables to consider:

* At what scale is 'self-programming' most effective?
* At what scale are autonomous 'computers' most effective?
* How effectively can 'self-programming' innovations be communicated and used across 'computer' boundaries?
* To what extent does collaboration across 'computer' boundaries increase effectiveness?
* How do political concepts such as freedom apply to 'computers'?

'Comptuer' in quotes because I really mean something like machine intelligence which has autonomous agency, which might be on tiny scale, or could be borgian.