[TechJunkYard]

Use the code, improve it, you are forced to share your improvements.

Only if you decide to publish your changes. If you start out with GPL'd code, the result remains GPL. Presumedly you'd want the other developers on the team to see what you've done.

If you modify code just for the heckuvit, or just for your own purposes, there is no such requirement. Your intellectual property remains intact. Simply keep it for yourself and don't publish.

If you want to do your own thing, from scratch, you can license it as OCO or or whatever you want.

IBM has managed to cope with the GPL, as IBM actually does do Linux development.

[Bush2000]

Only if you decide to publish your changes.

That's a pretty insidious restriction. Whatever happened to the notion that free source code is free source code?!? Look, you and I both know that the GPL is one of the open source community's most criticized points of contention. Frankly, I think that when you make something free, it should be free ... as in, no strings, no requirements, etc.