Also what's very interesting was that one of WG's top lawyers was at a conference with Sontag:
www.groklaw.net/quotes/trscr/?date=2003-11-18C
"Host: And so what should I do to protect myself?
Henry: You have a basic problem here, and the question a couple moments ago highlights it. And it underlays everything that Darl said, and that is, and I'll spare you the Latin, but the basic premise of the law is, you can't give what you don't own. I mean, the license isn't worth the paper it's written on, if the licensor doesn't have the right to give you. It's just like going out and buying a house. You better check the title. And the problem in the open source world is that developers have been extremely lax in worrying about title. They don't, in the simplest case, if you have a small company and it's got some stringers that do a little bit of code here and there. I mean, they don't even have written agreements to assign the rights into the company, so they give an open source license GPL or otherwise to what? To what they have, but that consultant or stringer can come along at any time, and say, 'What a second, you, Mister Licensee, are now an infringer.'"