[sillysaurus3]

When I first started programming, a lot of the licensing rhetoric seemed like much ado about nothing. "Look at all these people squabbling about who's allowed to do what with text! It's text! Sheesh!"

But one quickly realizes that the concept of software license restrictions is a fundamental reason for the strength and momentum of open source software. Therefore, it must be true that a central tenant of being a good developer is to respect software licenses. Not merely respect them to the letter of how they're written, but to respect their spirit as well. If an author wishes you don't do something with their code, then you don't do it. There are plenty of reasons why this should be the case, but the most compelling for me is that it'd be lame to ignore the author's wishes while using their work, even if the author won't ever know about it.

If people are still feeling tempted to lift code, well... Remember that you only get to destroy your reputation once.