Once again, one of those tedious discussions about how open-source projects would supposedly be notoriously bad at controlling license compliance for code. Come on? This is getting annoying. Why do people keep opening their mouths about this without engaging their brains?
So first of all, there's hardly any software sector that pays closer attention to licenses than the open-source sector. If only because of the various incompatible open-source licenses (every developer will eventually run into license compatibility issues with the GPL - those discussions keep coming up). Also, in the open-source sector, many projects are explicitly careful to ensure that no proprietary content ends up in the source code - see for example the Samba project or Wine. Both manage to exist alongside Microsoft (and Microsoft's legal department is no slouch). And what really gets me about this whole thing: why do these people always believe that proprietary, closed software development doesn't steal foreign source code? That assumption is absurd. In the area of open-source projects, anyone can read the source code - including companies. Everyone can check whether foreign source is being used. In the proprietary sector, however, that's not possible. Here, costly court proceedings are needed to achieve source code reviews, and proof is not exactly easy. So please don't just parrot the FUD from companies like SCO, please use your head first and think about it. And check the facts.
At Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants there's the original article.