The license statement is just ridiculous and doesn't mean anything at all, yet it gives legal departments everywhere a big problem to deal with.
As for the license statement, it is there beacuase he wants to. Have you ever thought that he may want that giant corporates don't use his code without permission first.
A clear example of this it's the main story of this discussion and the response by tlrobinson.
EDIT: The startups don't have this problem. Big corporations do.
What makes you say that this is not a problem for startups? Is it because you think startups are too small to profitably take to court and thus can safely ignore software licenses, or because you think that somehow companies below a certain size are incapable of evil?
"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." - Ambrose Bierce
That quote is good for a laugh, but a lot of people actually believe that without thinking it through entirely. Corporations exist to limit legal liability to the corporation itself: So if a group of 10 people get together to do something, they can form a corporation, and the people won't lose their personal possessions if something goes wrong on the corporate level. Meanwhile, anyone who does business with the corporation is informed it's a corporation - in order to keep the legal protections of a corporation, the corporation must explicitly identify itself with markings of "Inc", "Co", "Corp", "Incorporated", or so on. When an officer of the corporation signs a document, he signs it as, "His Name, Pres." instead of just his name - indicating that he's signing in his officer role, not personally. People who do business with the corporation understand that if something goes wrong, they can sue the corporation, but not the individuals who invested in it and its employees, unless the people did something wrong as individuals as well.
Some people think this is a bad thing, but they ignore what happens if you didn't have them. If corporation limited liability wasn't available, established people would be muc more hesitant to go into a dangerous line of business for fear of losing what they already have. So you wouldn't have the most talented and established businessmen managing and investing in dangerous work like long distance shipping, mining, drilling, etc. Fields that are particularly dangerous would be populated only by people with nothing to lose - a scary proposition.
Actually, personally, I think the ideal is to make corporate limited liability weaker at the same time as generally having courts hold people liable less often. Currently, if you slip on ice in front of a business, you've got a decent chance of winning a lawsuit which is crazy. Spilling hot coffee. Etc. Reducing liability and generally admitting that "bad stuff happens and isn't always someone's fault" while simultaneously holding individuals more accountable when they actually do wrong would probably be the best legal mix. But, if you want lots of liability and broad judicial jurisdiction, you absolutely need to have limited liability in order to allow the most experienced people to get involved in dangerous and important fields without risking everything they already have.
As an example of such, consider this recent datum: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2009/1...
I feel sure there must be some pragmatic medium between corporate fecklessness and the opposite case of unlimited liability.
These kinds of "licenses" are more likely hurtful to startups than large corporations.