You have to consider several factors:
1. Information (and source code) was not so freely available as it became even by the mid-90s, when the internet itself started approaching ubiquity and the Web provided much greater access to information.
2. A large part of the OSS movement has long focused on replacing Unix-like OSes with a FOSS Unix-like OS, which eventually meant GNU/Linux becoming the dominant system people rallied behind. This focus carries with it a language focus, C.
3. Smalltalk in the 80s and through most of the 90s was not easily used freely, and implementing it carries its own costs even if you have people interested in it. Without the common experience of having used it, there is less of a desire to create a free version of it (see 2, the common UNIX and Unix-like experience shared by OSS developers molded and directed the movement, even if not consciously).
If the Internet had been more widely available, Smalltalk more widely used and free (or at least much cheaper), then maybe we would have seen a different outcome.