Plan 9 license

[Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.]

Hmm... I wish I had noticed the context of the statements below. I missed
the thread of this discussion.

I am puzzled why the GPL permits private (or in-house) distributions of
modifications to be kept private; the advantages seem to be outweighed by
the disadvantages. Doesn't this essentially keep a good deal of software
development secret or undisclosed?

Rod

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Stallman [mailto:rms at santafe.edu]
> Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 8:59 AM
> To: cds at ghs.com
> Cc: david at usermode.org; konold at suse.de; weigel at pitt.edu;
> license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: Plan 9 license
>
>
>     My understanding was that a legal entity can make private
>     modifications to GPL software and is allowed to keep those
>     modifications private,
>
> That is our interpretation.  In other words, using a copy
> within the company is not distribution to others.
>
>     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.
>
> I believe that they can.
>