I'm not sure I understand your confusion entirely, would appreciate some clarification.

It's bad in any case, it's worse when you're uninformed on an issue core to your entire mission. This is an area their lawyers should be exceptionally experienced and informed in, where it'd be potentially easier to forgive a lawyer completely green on FOSS making a mistake on something they thought was straightforward.

I think a lawyer that's completely green on FOSS and working for any company I've heard of should never have been hired. Maybe I'm naive but that sounds insane to me.

To clarify, any lawyer working for any company with a publicly available, physical (read: non-software or computer hardware) product or service that I've heard of should never make this mistake. That's why I wouldn't think it's especially weird that the company in question is one who offers a software product.

Anyway, you do otherwise make a good point. I can understand that someone sees it that way. (And thanks for explaining your perspective!)