Software patents are a US thing, and it's a good thing many don't care about them.
I should have said for-profit software instead of companies, really; the legal entity is quite irrelevant in this case. I said companies because they are entities that: 1) stand to be sued in case of license violations (you typically don't sue a hobbyist project) 2) have the perceived need to maximize profits, and as a consequence want to veer off from anything that might require releasing source code, which might offset a competitive advantage. Thus a hobbyist project being a licensing clusterfuck is a less critical issue, although it is of course an important one (and certainly, depending on the project’s popularity, there may be a vocal portion of people wanting to clarify the situation).
The pain and confusion ratings also do not go into the details which are useful for OSS projects, such as how do licenses interact with each other, how is attribution and re-licensing managed, etc. Not to mention the ratings do not differentiate between pain/confusion for the developer, and pain/confusion for other future developers (e.g. in case of a lib).
(I admit that I tend to forget that there is also hobbyist closed-source software, for reasons I never understand)
Software patents also exist in most of the EU and Asia as well, unfortunately. Check out one of the MPEG-LA license portfolios and look at the countries represented if you want your day ruined.
I should have said for-profit software instead of companies, really; the legal entity is quite irrelevant in this case. I said companies because they are entities that: 1) stand to be sued in case of license violations (you typically don't sue a hobbyist project) 2) have the perceived need to maximize profits, and as a consequence want to veer off from anything that might require releasing source code, which might offset a competitive advantage. Thus a hobbyist project being a licensing clusterfuck is a less critical issue, although it is of course an important one (and certainly, depending on the project’s popularity, there may be a vocal portion of people wanting to clarify the situation).
The pain and confusion ratings also do not go into the details which are useful for OSS projects, such as how do licenses interact with each other, how is attribution and re-licensing managed, etc. Not to mention the ratings do not differentiate between pain/confusion for the developer, and pain/confusion for other future developers (e.g. in case of a lib).
(I admit that I tend to forget that there is also hobbyist closed-source software, for reasons I never understand)