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SubjectArticle: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux
From http://www.zdnet.com/sr/stories/news/0,4538,2177559,00.html:

"With a general public license, there are some exposures with liability
and how open are the patents if you modify the code. The best way to solve
this is by cleaning up the license."

**shudder**

It is unclear to me whether they are suggesting that GNU change the
GPL in their favor, or want Linux to swich to another license. I hope they
understand that GPL'd code cannot be switched to a different license.

I am afraid that large, proprietary companies with intrest in the
Linux market will lead to the death of GNU/Linux. I already see here about
companies criticizing the GPL. Another
example would be WordPerfect. Thursday when a new version came out for $0
cost I decided to sin and try it. It sucked. It was totally proprietary
and used proprietary libraries. The source code was not even available so
there was no way I could compile it on my architecture of choice
(PowerPC), and binaries were only available for i386. Corel released a
small press release saying how "We have proven that the Linux community
wants access to commercial, mainstream applications. . . and we intend to
deliver them." Well, not everyone does want proprietary applications! I'm
sticking with emacs until AbiWord is ready for prime time. I am not
looking forward to the day when I will be forced to switch to another
operating system such as GNU/HURD becuase it becomes nearrly impossible to
run a clean GNU/Linux system becuase GNU/Linux has gotten too popular for
it to be free.


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