> Claiming legal naivete is acceptable and sometimes even commendable is probably the most irresponsible thing I've ever read on here

I'll stand by it. Most Americans are legally naïve. Most founders are, too. A start-up has to make trade-offs--it's far from clear such licensing agreements are make-or-break at the angel or seed stage.

Once that's pointed out to you, you hopefully either hire a lawyer or mitigate your legal cross section until you can afford one, e.g. by using template license agreements instead of rolling your own. But until you've been given that feedback, it's not some bizarre conclusion someone can come to. Most small businesses, for example, are formed perfectly well without much legal sophistication.

Template license agreements have been presumably written or reviewed by a contract lawyer somewhere along the line. I certainly wouldn't judge a founding team that chooses to use vetted legal templates - that's a reasonable choice early on when money is better spent on product than expensive lawyer hours.

However, using templates is a far cry from asking an LLM to write your agreement and assuming it won't hallucinate something that's going to put you in legal jeopardy.

> However, using templates is a far cry from asking an LLM to write your agreement and assuming it won't hallucinate something that's going to put you in legal jeopardy

Sure. Not disputing it isn’t incredibly stupid. But if, on having that pointed out, the founders had admitted it was a dumb thing to do—they had acted thoughtlessly and recognised as much—I’d be willing to forgive them the error. Hence, forgivable.