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It's a cartoon wildebeest.

Then go read the license, at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html, before making historically false statements. I've worked with all the licenses you name, and the Apache license, and various closed source licenses. The GPL wins hands down for insisting that open source work remain open source even after local fragmenting, in order to block the very "embrace and extend" that was done to BSD in the 1980's and that was attempted by Microsoft with Kerberos and Java.

If you only "know what it is about" and have never read it, you're in the same position as the USA after Colin Powell lied publicly to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and you risk similarly wasting massive resources based on statements by a well-meaning but misled leader.

I believe the standard answer is something along these lines.

Yep, it is listed in FSF's list of confusing or loaded words: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy

OTOH, Haskell is probably the most strongly typed language out there, and it compiles down to machine code binaries.

Java can be compiled to machine code binaries. Every language can, since machine code is Turing complete. And there exists garbage collection modules for C and C++, so clearly being compiled to machine code ahead of time has nothing to do with being "managed code". So, please explain what your point was?

However, MSVS 2010 leaves it far behind, and you can download MSVS 2010 Beta right now (it's been available via MSDN subscription for a while now).

I can download the beta, but its not a shipping product. So, comparing a beta to a shipping product seems like apples and oranges to me.

Also, MSVS 2010 supports some nice C++0A features.

That's cool and honestly very welcome. But keep in mind that the current shipping version of GNU GCC supports a great many C++0 features as well.

http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html

You wrote: "They aren't so much competitions as they are organizations who try to determine which students have best displayed future potential for their fields. It's not like a one-on-one "science off" where two students try to one-up one another with their mastery of arcane mathematical facts; it's a bunch of students, all of whom are amazing in their own right, versus panels of distinguished judges. You don't "compete" beyond the fact that an organization can't give an award to everyone - in fact, some of my best friends are the ones that I met through these competitions."

More from:
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
"""
Kohn defines competition as any situation where one person's success is dependent upon another's failure. Put another way, in competition two or more parties are pursuing a goal that cannot be attained by all. He calls this 'mutually exclusive goal attainment' (MEGA).
Kohn goes on to define two distinct types of competition. In 'structural competition' MEGA is an explicit, defining element in the nature of the interaction. For instance in a game of tennis there can be only one winner. The same is true of beauty contests, presidential elections, and wars. Everyone knows they are out to beat the others though the rules of engagement may vary considerably between events.
Intentional competition' is a state of mind, an individual's competitiveness or his proclivity for besting others. Anyone can go to a party determined to establish him or herself as the most intelligent, the most attractive, etc. Similarly, in school, the work place, and on teams people can try to beat others whether or not anyone is formally keeping score and declaring winners and losers.
One place where competition cannot exist, according to Kohn, is within oneself. Such striving to better one's own standing is an individual, not interactive matter; it does not involve MEGA. Of course some people cannot imagine pushing themselves without the possibility of 'winning' or the threat of 'losing', but this by no means implies that all motivation is dependent upon competitive frameworks. Throughout history countless large and small accomplishments have been achieved simply out of an individual's desire to do better without any thought of beating others. Such striving for mastery cannot be confused with competition.
"""

Note also that:
"Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator: Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html

Also, as was pointed out to me by Hans Moravec when I hung out in his lab, good research involves taking risks, and coping with repeated failures. He suggested that he was as successful as he was (and he is brilliant and a thought leader in many ways) because he failed a lot early in life. :-) Now that you have a reputation to protect, you may find this difficult.

See the ideas outlined here to see more on why I am concerned about this (as a parent for my own child):
"How Not to Talk to Your Kids"
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/ [multiple pages]
"Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. "Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control," she explains. "They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure." In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids' reasoning goes; I don't nee

Or a better question, do you know more people that have used Linux or emacs?

Can you run emacs without Linux (or BSD (or Solaris (or "GNU/Linux" (or [insert-random-non-mainstream-os-here]))))?

Survey says yes. But how many Windows users have even heard of emacs?

Little by little, without our even realizing it, we're in the nightmare DRM world. Imagine waking up today after last being conscious in 1995. What, you need to be connected to the network to play games you purchased? What, the operating system limits the number of hardware changes you can make? What, you TV and speakers have DRM built-in? What, operating systems won't load kernel-mode code unless it's been approved by the OS vendor? Our books can be deleted out from under us? That's preposterous. That's fiction.

No, this was the stuff of dystopian fiction 15 years ago. Now it's daily life. Who knows what restrictions we'll see in the next 15 years? Will you finally stop thinking those of us who decry DRM are just crying wolf?

Oh, yeah! Well we've been waiting an unsigned long long time!

I honestly don't, do you mind providing a link. Did people come in one morning and find their gcc 2.96 had automatically upgraded itself?

This was relatively back in the day, but the GCC maintainers still have their page up:
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-2.96.html

RH decided they were impatient with gcc 3.0 and just plopped down a random cvs snapshot in their distro, much to the chagrin of the gcc community.

It depends on whose definition you use. The OSI apparently intends for all open source software to be free as well, which is why they approve licenses which follow that ideal. You seem to be implying that all open software is free. GP corrected you, correctly.

"Open source" conventionally means the source is open, so a lot of Microsoft's "shared source" falls under the term open source. It happens not to meet the OSI standard.

The entire point of this page is to spell that out, using of course definitions from a different person - Richard Stallman "Our" in this context refers to GNU. In contrast to the previous gnu.org link, this one states that they are different, though overlapping. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

The official definition of "open source software," as published by the Open Source Initiative, is very close to our definition of free software; however, it is a little looser in some respects, and they have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably restrictive of the users. However, the obvious meaning for the expression "open source software" is "You can look at the source code." This is a much weaker criterion than free software; it includes free software, but also includes semi-free programs such as Xv, and even some proprietary programs, including Qt under its original license (before the QPL).

To summarize, there are a lot of people who believe access to source code does not imply you can do with it as you will, Microsoft is usually in that boat. Others believe it should be implied that releasing it means others can use it as they wish, same as if they got a table and wanted to saw off a leg to fit the oddly curved floor, which meets the definition of Stallman and by representation GNU.

I would say that choosing a single definition of open source when it is well known that definitions vary is misrepresentation.

Hahaha, nice one.

In case you're not getting the joke: The very definition of open-source states that modification and distribution must be allowed.

So yes. If it is open source, you _are_ allowed to distribute and modify, exactly as I stated.

Also, Free software and open source software are _not_ different things (and neither does the article referenced by the parent claim they are). The difference is not in the software, but in the philosophy: open source is the apolitical term, whereas Free software is the term preferred by those who wish all software to be Free software.

``Just because someone allows you to use the source of a program doesn't mean you can legally do anything you want with it.''

That is correct, but just being allowed to use the source in some way does not make the software open source, in the same way that not being charged for the software doesn't make it Free software. Some of Microsoft's earlier "shared source" initiatives can serve as an example of this: you get to see the source code, but you are not allowed to modify and distribute it - therefore, it is not open source.

``Just want you all to know the difference so you're not confused in the future.''

I hope that my post has managed to clear up some confusion. And please, don't go off misrepresenting open source anymore.

Making it open source allows you to use it, distribute it, and modify it.

Wrong. Open Source and Free software are totally different things. Yes, Free software is Open Source, but being Open Source does not mean that it is Free. Just because someone allows you to use the source of a program doesn't mean you can legally do anything you want with it. However, I just looked up the Apache License and it seems very similar to licenses like the LGPL, so in this case, you're free to do as you please.

Just want you all to know the difference so you're not confused in the future.

Its their technology, and I think .NET is a windows only thing.

You think wrong.

Maybe even software? I mean, why not?

So can copyright assigned to the Free Software Foundation be taken back? How would that affect the license that the software was released under? http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html

Most folks here talk about "Oh, Linux is free!" but sorry, that's bullshit. Yeah the OS may be free, but you ever priced a Linux Guru?

You obviously have no idea what the word free refers to.

It is a LOT easier to teach a teacher how to go "clicky clicky, next next next" than to deal with a CLI.

Fuck you. If you actually had used GNU/Linux since 1996 you'd know it's not CLI only.

Here's a little challenge for you: What administration task can I not perform using a modern GNU/Linux GUI?

Question: how can you tell GPL code is GPL code unless you know that it's GPL code?

Version 2 requires that GPL-covered code states clearly that it's covered by the GPL.

[Section 1] You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

Section 2, which covers modifying and then distributing, says "do Section 1 in this case too".

See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html for the full text.

glibc manual on rename()

This may be surprising, but, no, sane application developers do not call the kernel directly. They use things like the standard C library. Things that have documented atomic behaviour.

Whether it's the fault of ext4 for not being atomic, or the fault of glibc for assuming all filesystems on Linux have atomic renames, is a separate matter; either way, the KDE application developers are at no fault.

Also, it would be extremely amusing to see a flame war between Theodore Tso and Ulrich Drepper, simply from their reputations.

The free software definition is very clear on this:

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

...

In order for the freedoms to make changes, and to publish improved versions, to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software.

Sun has some very cool hardware and software, not to mention an open source friendly attitude...

Sun has a Machiavellian attitude towards open source. They are open-source friendly when it suits their needs (public image). They are certainly not friendly to all open source projects. Need an example? Look at GCC. They feel free to rip off the GCC front-end for GCCFSS. They contribute virtually nothing to the GCC or binutils software in return.

Want to know how the GCC devs feel about it? Read the mailing list thread.

All their customers want is a fast and portable compiler for Sun hardware. Sun's own compiler sucks for C++ development. You have to use a non-standard, obsolete and soon to be deprecated C++ standard library just to have a slight chance of compiling any modern C++ software.

If you want to see just how screwed up their C++ development environment is going to get, you just have to read this thread: http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=289188&tstart=0

Ok, go for it: I use firefox on amd64, and don't have a working flash plugin. Looking forward to your solution.

Your best bet would be Gnash or something similar. That way you can compile it yourself to suit your 64-bit architecture.

Org-Mode for Emacs has pretty good LaTeX support. For one, it identifies equations automatically, so you can dispense with the $ signs. It also converts the formula to an image in the buffer, so you can see the actual math instead of markup. With CD-LATEX, it even offers tab completion of LaTeX templates.

Combined with Org-mode's export capabilities and hierarchial ordering, it's a pretty good tool to take notes with. I've handled a couple of physics classes with it, although I eventually reverted to pen and paper because I kept getting distracted.

It's that time again. Before anyone comments on GPL lifting, please take the GPL quiz:

The GPL Quiz

Anyone who gets a perfect score may comment in this thread, all others please keep uninformed conclusions out.

It's .NET code. It's already "Open Source" by virtue of tools like Reflector existing.

LOL, yes but not Free Software.

I hope they did violate the license and will be sued to the ground.

1. Yes/no.
2. See above. Nobody cares about Shockwave, though.
3. Yes.

It's called Gnash. See http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
There's also a few others, such as http://swfdec.freedesktop.org/wiki/ . Gnash is probably better.

You can keep full control of your source code by not signing away the right to sublicense with additional restrictions.

In other words someone who uses my code has less control of my code than I do.

For example license under a weak copyleft, such as: The Mozilla Public License, The LGPL.

Or a strong copyleft such as the GPLv3, AGPLv3, OSL,

No, the BSD allows me to open or close my source code, that is control. It also allows me to sale a binary code for installation on 1 computer. That is control. I don't know about the other licenses you mention but the GPL is freedom for users not programmers. The GPL is about user's freedom to "run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve" software. It is not about programmer's freedom, other than the freedom to use the GPL or another license.

While the GPL is terrific and works well for many programmers it doesn't work well for others.

Falcon

If that were Free Software on the other hand...

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Basically there should be an infrastructure company and ISPs. The infrastructure company maintains the wires, is 100% neutral, and rents it out to ISPs, all for the same price.

ISPs on the other hand, would be free to do whatever they want. At first this sounds bad, but it wouldn't be because there would be so many ISPs that if one of them did something you didn't like, you could switch. When everyone was on dialup, there were tons of ISPs to choose from. So if one ISP decides to filter things like porn (and lets face it, there are some people who would want that), that's ok, you can switch to another one.

Then everyone can be happy. Orrin Hatch can be happy because there will be competition between ISPs, which is what he professes to want. The rest of us will be happy because there will be more choices than just Comcast, and the competition will result in better service and prices (I've always gotten better service from small ISP companies than large ones. Without exception). The only ones who would suffer would be the current monopolistic providers, but that's ok.

As for Apple, they aren't violating network neutrality because they are governing what can be run on the device, not what can flow over the network. While this is bad, it is more a violation of the four freedoms of software. But while we're complaining about Apple we should complain about the app developers too, because they aren't releasing their source code, either.

If you can't see why this is just as bad, you probably don't understand the four freedoms.

As anyone noticed the first page of Ubuntu doesn't contain any mention to Linux, or GNU.

Ever seen this before - "Ubuntu, Linux for human beings."

Also there is a link to the GNU website. Look harder.

...here.

In another instance,

Nicholas Harbour, who at the time was working for the Department of Defense Computer Forensics Lab (DCFL)

wrote a loving modified dd that writes to multiple files and streams to multiple programs at the same time. The program, dcfldd, also introduces the sorely missed VERIFY operation, and even block-by-block hashes, ( dcfldd Man page)

Maybe someone will combine this with dd_rescue, ddrescue and dd_rhelp to make the ultimate "Convert and Copy" utility :-)

Ah and I can dream of SCTP support too :-)

Sometimes it is a problem for Open Source. gcc "2.96" for example. A distro took an experimental version of gcc, called it "2.96" (the previous version was 2.95.x) and released it in their distribution. This version of gcc had a number of serious problems and incompatibilities with other versions of gcc.

This caused quite a few headaches. If you ever see a version of gcc marked 2.96, DO NOT use it. It is screwed up.

This is partly why I don't like to use distros who modify projects. Yeah, they may improve the crap script kiddie ones, or the ones written by universities where they are based on sound concepts, but were programmed by non-programmers--scientists and the like.

But, many of the very popular core projects are written by programming experts who are the best in their field. For example OpenSSL and Debian: did the maintainer really think he was more of a cryptography programming expert than the OpenBSD guys? No frakking way!

Its very simple. we can choose either to have DRM, or to retain control of our infromation. We can't have both and the middle ground between the two is shrinking as software becomes more crucial to different areas of commerce.

See The Right to Read by RMS.

Every time rms is brought up, someone hauls out this phrase "extremely narrow definition of free"

Really? Narrow? *Extremely narrow?!?? How many licenses are considered free?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Software is free if it respects the four freedoms. They're clear and, in my opinion, not the slightest bit narrow.

Nine times out of ten this comes from someone who prefers "permissive" licenses to copyleft ones. But these *are considered free by the FSF.

Are you just tweaked that rms and others *prefer that copyleft licenses be used? That's nothing to do with how "narrow" their definition of free is. It's a pragmatic argument about which intelligent people can disagree.

But this "extremely narrow" business serves no purpose vis-a-vis intelligent disagreement. It's a rhetorical whack meant to associate principled advocates of free software with limitations,restrictions & unfreedom.

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

[snip]

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

I think if you were to sell your phone on as a private sale I think that would count as "noncommercial", in which case you would apply clause 3c of the GPL v2.0 and "Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code."

So if you're redistributing something in a noncommercial way (and I'm guessing a private sale would count in that sense) then you can refer the recipient on to the offer from the original distributer. In all other cases it is required to provide the source or a written offer to provide the source. So if you bought 100 G1s on the cheap to sell on eBay then you would need to provide a written offer or the source itself.

This is interesting, because it would seem to me that a shop selling G1s would, under the terms of this license, need to provide the source themselves and not just refer to the manufacturer of the device. I can't see another reasonable plain-English interpretation of section 3. I guess that's one of the issues with the GLP - it's not just/even a 'nice' license, it's actually a piece of clever social engineering - PC World, Best Buy etc. ought to have leaflets at the Customer Service desk explaining their source code policies, just like they have leaflets to comply with local recycling/environmental laws.

Actually, pointing out why Open Source misses the point of Free Software isn't pedantic or irrelevant, these differences are real and they explain why RMS takes the position you just pointed out.

RMS, as you rightly point out, understands that non-free software which eventually becomes free software is significantly better than non-free software that stays non-free forever because the former leads to eventually respecting our software freedom while the other can lead to our loss of software freedom. The open source movement is interested in a development methodology aimed primarily at businesses, not framing issues in terms of user's software freedom. Open source proponents aren't taught to think in terms of user's software freedom. This too can lead to the loss of software freedom. So whenever someone licenses a non-free program, open source advocates have little reason to object despite how that chips away at our freedom (from the aforementioned essay, "This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss."). Free software activists, on the other hand, lament the disrespect for user's freedom which motivates them to support a project to develop a free replacement so that everyone can do that job whilst retaining their software freedom. Finally, as for the GPL: RMS wrote the GPL with user's freedoms in mind. The reason we enjoy the freedoms you champion at the end of your post is precisely because RMS pays attention to all computer user's software freedom. Had he taken an interest in mere development methodology instead, proprietary derivatives might be far more common than they are.

First off, I didn't say the BSD license was not "free." Read my post again. I'll admit there was a very weak implication there, but not a statement of fact. Certainly one one justifying your condescending post. Secondly, perhaps YOU should educate yourself: the original BSD license is not considered "free" (by the FSF) because it is incompatible with the GPL. The revised license is more or less acceptable to RMS:

"In the GNU project, we use copyleft to protect these freedoms legally for everyone. But non-copylefted free software also exists. We believe there are important reasons why it is better to use copyleft, but if your program is non-copylefted free software, it is still basically ethical." http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

So yeah, if you use the revised BSD license you're "still basically ethical."

> If you want software freedom, then there is only one license -- no license at all.

Nope. You could license under the WTFPL, which is a recognized Open Source license, fully compatible with the GPL.

> Let's not pretend that GPL software is any different.

It is. There are absolutely no conditions imposed in order to use GPL licensed software, as long as you don't distribute it in any way. However, as you correctly point out, the average proprietary software's EULA has gobs of conditions which you have to fulfill to be allowed to even use the software as it was meant to be used. Probably one of the reasons why no one is actually sure if EULAs are enforceable.

Sun's MySQL page states ( http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.4.html ) that it is licensed under GPL and refers you to the following URL:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Which clearly states it can be licensed using any newer version of GPL by anyone who wants to do so.

I'm sorry, you were claiming something about what RMS was stating? I lost track after realizing you had no idea how it was licensed.

Did you have to agree to a license before you could use any of these items? NO.

Are you serious? Maybe you should read the GPL before passing public judgment on it.

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).

      -- GPLv2

Maybe you are thinking of this short story, "Right To Read" by Richard Stallman?

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Reminds of two things, RMS's parapble and one of my favorite depressing but funny movies.

Between this and reading that Microsoft is assisting Lockheed-Martin with the "new" internet I've decided it's best
I just go back to bed for a few years...

Ok, seriously. Why Algol-60?

Because it is one of the three languages that started it all, and one that affected all existing mainstream languages most. Curly braces of C, and the block construct that they represent, began their life as "begin .. end" in Algol-60.

Because it is at the same time a very beautiful language - especially considering the time when it was designed - and one with some very advanced constructs, not found even in many modern languages, that can pose significant challenge to implement efficiently, especially in an otherwise constrained environment such as sandboxed CLR. To list a few such features: computed goto, label variables/function arguments and the associated nonlocal goto, arbitrarily nested functions with variable capturing, and call-by-name. Challenges are fun.

Because it's a very important milestone in history of CompSci in general, and language design in particular (in case it's not quite obvious yet, I'm a language design geek), a piece of it that I wish to preserve. Apparently, I'm not alone in that, either - there's also GNU Marst - curiously enough, written by another Russian dude.

Because Simula-67 (the first OOP language ever, and the ultimate ancestor of virtually every statically typed OO language today, including C++, Java and C#) is a strict superset of Algol-60, and I wanted to go after it next.

And, of course, just for fun. I mean, this is Slashdot, right? We routinely get people installing KDE2 on NetBSD running on toasters with 7-segment indicators here; I think my little fetish is relatively benign in contrast.

(To bring the above references to Algol-60 language features into some context for those not familiar with the subject, the final Algol-60 language spec is here; it's a fairly short read.)

After all everybody her on SlashDot knows that Algol-68 is the most recent version!

Algol-68 is an entirely different language from Algol-60. It's not evolutionary, but a complete, ground-up redesign, by very different people. It's also a very interesting one, and important in its own right, since C borrowed a lot of things from it, down to keywords (VOID, INT, SHORT, LONG, STRUCT and UNION are all Algol-68 keywords with virtually the same meaning they have retained in C).

It would be fairly interesting thing to implement as well, but in many ways it's a much more rationally designed language than Algol-60, dropping some overly exotic and complicated features, and, consequently, implementing it is less of a challenge (I guess they had had enough real-world experience writing compilers by then to conclude that some features of Algol-60 looked good on paper only...).

LGPL is 2.1 already:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.html

FSF has that here. My own rationale is that application of DMCA to my code in a locked down device makes my code essentially proprietary. I might be persuaded to write proprietary code for someone, but I'd want to be paid for that. My motivation for writing code that I'm not paid for is that the code will remain free.

This is a work-around for the bug that copyright law does not define a public-performance right for software, although a similar right is defined for audio recordings, movies, and theatrical scripts.

Do you really think that adding a bizarre twist to what's already a complicated and confusing legal system is patching a bug?

From your suggestion, anyone running a Linux webserver would have to make the source available per the GPL? Computer labs and internet cafes using any GPL software as well? What if I let a stranger on the bus use my laptop to check e-mail?

Thus, we had a loop-hole in that companies which performed the software over the net without ever distributing it can make substantive derivative works of the program from which they derive tremendous profit but have none of the obligations. Think of google in this context.

It's fairly clear and easy to define what public performance of artistic works are.

What exactly do you think is a public performance of software? Would you argue that using gcc is a public performance and thus everything compiled with it is now GPLed? Would reading data created on a clustered Linux supercomputer be a public performance? Is only interactive use of software like using modified web forum software public performance? You cite Google, but users don't get anything but the results of non-GPLed software that's running on top of an OS that is GPLed. Why is this any different from a publishing company that uses a modified version of Open Office internally to publish books in dead tree format?

If anything akin to what you're suggesting was created, the "GPL is a virus" folks would have an absolute field day - and justifiably so.

Your "tremendous profit" statement is bordering on a strawman - there's nothing in the GPL against making a profit - and reflects a position on the GPL that I'm not sure is part of its intent. From the FSF GPL FAQ:

The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.

It doesn't say if you let someone outside your organization use the modified version, only if you distribute it externally.

Fork it and create your own.

You can't.

If only they had released GPLv2 under GPLv2, then you could fork it yourself.

You can, but you cannot call your new license the GNU GPL v2.1, and it won't be a successor with regard to the "or any later version" clause. It will be a completely separate license, which you can use to license your own code. It is unlikely to be compatible with the GPL, so you wouldn't be able to combine it with GPL software (except for mere aggregation).

No you can't:

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document [the GPLv2], but changing it is not allowed.
[emphasis added]