YMMV, I guess, depending upon where you work/have worked but despite working in commercial software, I've had a bigger problem convincing past bosses that using pirated software to do our jobs is a problem than I have had with bosses who were overly concerned about copyright law to the point where it would be an issue in my hypothetical case.

I still think the original objection is more retold fairy tale than truth, but if anyone wants to prove me wrong they can point me to a country where public domain isn't recognized, but random user-written OSS licenses are and the country has any sort of culture of respecting copyright in the first place.