> > > Just curious, you do realize what most of the devs do for a living right? The > companies they work for? > > You may learn a thing or two about copyright law when most of the code you write gets > copyrighted. >
I'll give my personal experience of writing code professionally.
Like most programmers working for a large company, I signed a contract granting that company full copyright to all the code I wrote for them. The portion of the code I worked on was owned by that company 100%, and I was free to add to, copy, modify, or delete any of it without worrying about copyright. Every time I checked in code, I specifically confirmed that no external code was present. Had I been caught checking in outside code without permission from my manager, I would probably have been fired.
Some of the company's code did incorporate open source projects or outside commercial code that they licensed. I know that this was all vetted by intellectual property experts, but not once in several years there did I have to deal with this myself.
My experience was quite unlike the situation with MAME. Others' mileage may vary, but I've probably learned more about copyright law by reading Slashdot than by working for a software company.