.... I used to use "licence" for both noun and verb, until I had to deal with licences and licensing (and Murrkin software) a lot.

Meta-peeve: Old English was (approximately) the result of mixing Anglo-Saxon with Old Norse, then there was a violent collision with Norman French; then Dr Johnson and co-conspirators overlarded it heavily with late Latin (including the wrong sort of grammar); and only then did spelling start settling down. Then the language pedants started making educated mistakes, like never permitting one to boldly split an infinitive; and we started picking up words from all over the Empire, and getting those wrong too. And you expect such a magpie language to be consistent? humph.

End of core dump.