Seems to me many pieces of code I see published in various venues
    have a little piece of data attached - legalese to effect that
    freedom is given for private use, but not "commercial" use.

This can make sense for whole programs, but it's pretty meaningless for
code snippets or algorithm discussions, IMO.


    Interesting philosophical question --> should I "give away"
    work that I produce on "my own time" when I know other people
    will turnaround and "sell it" for profit?

Yes.  The theory is that you get back more overall value than you
contribute.  That's what makes it a forum.  That's what "open source" is
all about.  Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased, yadda,
yadda...  There's an awful lot more to selling code for profit than just
writing it, stuff that programmers are likely to find unpleasant.

Depending on If you're contributing much more than you're getting back,
(try to) teach a seminar and get paid for it!  (Hmm.  Presuming things like
the PIC Masters class hand out some code snippets, exactly how are those
marked with respect to reuse?)

BillW

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