Dude. You speak true.

You also run the risk of being slashdotted in such a big way *laughs*

It's for the reasons you give that all the code samples I give on my blog do not mention licensing whatsoever. When I wrote code samples on my blog, it's for others to learn by and perhaps use if it helps them with code that they are writing. I wouldn't publish it this way if I wasn't expecting people to steal it and use it.

I view open source software (as opposed to snippets that appear in blogs) in the same light. It serves two purposes - it gives you a possibly usable app, and it also shows how to perform a particular task (or many). When I release anything open source, I more often than not consider it a complete 'howto' guide, rather than a packaged and unchangable application.

What's very cool is that for a few of the snippets I've posted on my blog people _have_ actually contacted me to ask if they can use it commercial software. I neither demand nor expect it, but the honest folk out there still ask. And my response is always the same. 'Go for your life, use it however you see fit!'.

I normally also ask them to send me back any bugs found (or fixes applied) but that's optional, and only because I always like to learn what I did wrong too :)

Sometimes I ask for a credit in the release notes, but that is also made very clear that that is entirely up to them as well :)

Heartily seconded. The Lesser GPL would be a much better alternative as it doesn't handcuff the consumer into releasing their code as GPL. It seems to me that a lot of people just whack their code under GPL without actually thinking about what it means to everybody else to do so.

It's fair to say that if you want to use the code any other way you should consider buying it.