Companies are used to complying with a thick stack of legalese? - please

I hold it to be a common myth, that "Complying with a thick stack of legalese in order to license some bit of proprietary code may seem easier, at least partly because companies are used to those kinds of licenses". The fact that very few people can claim to understand the intricacies of the plethora of interactions of proprietary license schemes with all their cross references simply hides the contradictions and violations from the public view.

The clear simplicity of Free Software licenses (and yes that includes the GPLv3 when compared to your classic EULA or redistribution agreements) just makes it much more obvious when a violation occurs that it becomes possible that nearly anyone using common sense can identify a potential violation.

That simply isn't the case in case in the proprietary world. Show me someone who understands the copyright, patent license and trademark obligations of distributing a .NET application for further redistribution, and I'll show you someone who is most likely confused.

The proprietary model as I see it, is about creating an unsurmountable confused mess of interdependent obligations, instating a direct or indirect revenue stream and ignoring the convoluted obligations as long as that revenue stream is satisfactory. Once that satisfaction falls below a threshold you start looking for violations, which are bound to exist, to increase that revenue be it by negotiation or litigation.