I think it's worth pointing out that software licenses are what enable the kind of world you're describing. Unless you're suggesting massively changing copyrigh

I think it's worth pointing out that software licenses are what enable the kind of world you're describing. Unless you're suggesting massively changing copyright law (Which may be a fair thing to suggest), the typical well known software licenses enable lots of code sharing and contributions by making it very easy to understand the terms on which you can use it. Without them, you could never easily share or take code contributions without potentially having tons of copyright issues. Put another way, the issue here is not software licenses in general, it's the fact the author picked an obscure one with with dubious requirements. Picking no license would have actually been worse than the license he had.