[rmc]

"Ah sure, us using this software is technically illegal, but sure, the original author isn't going to come after us" is usually not a good line to write on your corporate "do we have enough licences audit"

The problem isn't that your might get sued, it's that you can't convince $POINTY_HAIRED_BOSS that you won't get sued.

[georgemcbay]

YMMV, I guess, depending upon where you work/have worked but despite working in commercial software, I've had a bigger problem convincing past bosses that using pirated software to do our jobs is a problem than I have had with bosses who were overly concerned about copyright law to the point where it would be an issue in my hypothetical case.

I still think the original objection is more retold fairy tale than truth, but if anyone wants to prove me wrong they can point me to a country where public domain isn't recognized, but random user-written OSS licenses are and the country has any sort of culture of respecting copyright in the first place.

[fhars]

There is almost no country in the world where a work by an author that is alive or has died less than seventy years ago can be in the public domain. So releasing code as "public domain" more or less limits the release to the US.