[jerf]

Yes, as I said, many people have many opinions. I think you'd find you're in the minority on HN (and the Internet armchair lawyer's favorite cry of "Fair use! Fair use!" which means next to nothing the way it is typically used) but probably with the majority of copyright laywers.

However, it hasn't actually been settled. I've been watching. The question of whether you can bypass the matter of distribution by distributing a patch you definitely 100% solely own, but then the end-user is the one doing the combining, is not established.