Licences also existed before FOSS, but open sources licences enabling the kind of freedoms that they allow did not exist. And as it happens, a license is not a technical artefact but a social contract. Stallman is activist, not simply a neutral combination of a technician and a lawyer.
The social contract and political vision are consequently not ancillary, but core to FOSS. Code is the medium, but the license is the innovation. Without that social contract, 'open' code is just abandonware.
The community doesn't need to be a 'house party,' but the license guarantees the right for a community to form when the original author walks away.