... but I apparently misunderstood your post, so I apologize

No, it was more that I wasn't clear than anything else. It was my fault.

Moron was advocating as good the practice of taking parts of CPAN modules and integrating them into his company's codebase.

I do agree with your overall point that people need to be careful about how they approach such things. However, as BrowserUK pointed out, where do we draw the line.

What is the difference between installing a module on a server, and copy/paste-ing that same code into a single script file? Assuming I have retained the original authors copyright, I (as a non-lawyer) see very little difference in either practice. I would suspect both practices could be construed as "integrating into the companies code base" by a OSS/tech ignorant lawyer.

What if I patch a module, and the author is not interested in integrating the patch? My natural inclination would be put the patched version into subversion and treat it like any other part of that codebase (keeping correct copyrights in place of course). This practice is part of why OSS is so useful, but from what you are saying it could place me, my company and the original developer at legal risk. That sucks.

Anyway, all this legal mumbo-jumbo is giving me a headache. In the end I think we both agree that its a difficult and slippery topic off which many lawyers will certainly get rich. I think Moron was probably well within the boundries of "acceptable usage", assuming he left copyrights (implied or otherwise) in place, ... er rather,.. i really really really hope he is for the sake of OSS.