An interesting takeaway from this piece is that GS is blatantly and systematically violating the terms of the MIT license, GPL, and whatever else they happen to get their hands on. I'd love nothing more than for the FSF to take them to court over it.
Me too, in principle, but realistically I think it would be a poor bet to make. Given the legal resources available to the respective parties there is a real danger that GS would win despite the merits, and possibly even set some precedent that Open Source folk would not find favorable.
IANAL, but I don't think so. Practically, probably; legally, unknown.
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
That makes it sound like ripping the license out and replacing it with a proprietary one, even for purely internal use, is probably a bad idea. I don't know who'd be able to sue them for that, though, if the original copyright "owners" aren't supposed to have seen it in the first place.
Article II of the GPL has a specific exception for transferring GPL-ed software to employees to work on without letting them spread it beyond that, but I don't know how much of this that would cover.
Copyright only applies when you distribute something. With your internal copy of something that you don't redistribute you can modify it however you like, and the GPL or any other copyright license never gets a chance to apply.
The only clause in MIT (besides the warranty disclaimer) is that the MIT license and original copyright notice must remain on all copies of the software.
