@Chip Bennett -
someone who (aside from the clearly plagiarized copy pasta from WP core) was in no way infringing upon WordPress’ copyright

So, someone who was in no way infringing upon WordPress copyright apart from when they were?

Why the vitriol, Jeff?
WordPress is built upon a principle of sharing and giving back. People who cynically steal code licensed on that understanding are no better than all the other parasites who make life harder for everyone: the spammers who waste so many billions of man-hours every year, shop-lifters who increase the cost of food and goods for families all over the world, mafia hoods who squeeze small businesses until they go bankrupt. Parasites are everywhere and can only be beaten back when honest, hard-working people unite together. The GPL, designed to fight the parasitic coders who want to take and not give back, is a perfect example of that.

Chris Pearson was a blatant parasite, he deserves vitriol; he has, finally, come into compliance with the license, probably only because he was caught red-handed with chunks of stolen code and would have been destroyed in court, but he has now undertaken to stop feeding off the community and that is to be welcomed.

It is just a damn shame that Chris had to drag everyone through this first and we are lucky that, when it came to the crunch, we had someone determined and well-resourced enough to face him down. I completely disagree with Matt on some issues such as the P filter (content should be sacrosanct, a CMS has no business secretly interfering with the words the user writes, I am perplexed that anyone could fail to see that) but, in this instance, he has performed a great service to all of us who rely upon the continued health and evolution of WordPress.