[JimDrew]

I don't think you get it.. there is nothing to get out of. People steal open source code and re-brand it as a commercial product every single day. Sad but true. It's up to the copyright holder to go after those people. Trust me, I have been in plenty of lawsuits over copyright infringements, both here in and overseas. If you are legit and have original code, there are no issues regardless of what you may have seen, experimented with, been exposed to, etc. This is not a personal opinion, it is legally tested fact that I have personally been through. How many copyright infringement lawsuits have you been involved in? Since you have seen the TG68 code, does that also mean you can not create your own CPU core without buying a license? Of course not! As long as you are not using any of that code, you can create whatever you like. You are certainly not starting in a "clean room" environment on a CPU core. You have obtained some knowledge from looking at that code... that knowledge (from what I have seen with some of the code) is knowing what NOT to do.

As far as U.S. companies having legal disclaimers pertaining to open source - that is to reduce the number of dumb lawsuits that might arise from someone believing that their work has been stolen. In reality, that disclosure does not protect anyone, it's more of a scare tactic to prevent their employees from stealing other work instead of using reference material to create their own. A court will decide an outcome should legal action be required. Simple as that. I am really surprised that anyone would believe that open source projects would have this kind of voodoo as reference material. Open source code is no different from commercial source code. The crime is the same (IP theft), regardless of where the stolen code comes from.