the general feel is that "You cannot use free software without the copyright owners permission--even if they haven't added an explicit copyright notice".

Er, that's kind of a confusing compound sentence. I'll make two better statements.

• You can (and are encouraged to) use Free Software (FSF's definition) without the owners permission. You can also distribute modified and unmodified versions of the software with out the owner's permission, provided you make the source code available to people you distribute to.
• Anything that lacks an explicit copyright notice and doesn't include a Free Software license is *not* Free Software and can't be used as such.

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