Plan 9 license

[Chris Sloan]

On Sun, Aug 27, 2000 at 11:45:02AM -0700, David Johnson wrote:
[...]
> First, there is no requirement to give changes back to the orginal
> authors. If I modify gcc, for example, and give a copy to my friend, I
> am not required to submit my modifications to anyone else. Second,
> despite any legal shieldings a corporation may have, they still cannot
> change the software's license. It doesn't matter if the corporation
> tells me as an employee not to redistribute their modifications, since
> it is not their copyright to change. As long as I personally possess a
> copy, I can redistribute it. 

Is this really true?

My understanding was that a legal entity can make private
modifications to GPL software and is allowed to keep those
modifications private, but if they choose to distribute the modified
version, they are required to distribute the source to the
modifications under the GPL.

So, since a corporation is allowed to make private changes, I don't
see why they could not instruct their employees to keep those changes
private to the company.

Have I misunderstood something here?

	Chris

-- 
Chris Sloan
cds at ghs.com
Systems Software Engineer
Green Hills Software