Legal issues generally will waggle themselves into any discussion, but the
thing is to keep them focused. So there is good and bad in the discussion,
I just don't see the antagonism thing (my spelling is atrocious). The
hostility and respect for whoever responds on the list. Tolerance is a
virtue.
In a development list, legal issues are important when we consider what is in and what is out a distribution. They're also important when we have to ponder things that are in but may be out in next distros... Just imagine that you develop tools using/for a programming environment that is present from the beggining of a distro and, at some point, it ceases to be distributed/supported despite the fact that the "new" license still grants the users the right of downloading and using it for non-profit purposes...