The weird wording change was indeed someone trying to raise capital
with something that got stuck under plan 9.  It was an idiotic
(closing the barn door after the horses had bolted) move and
luckily the lawyers realized it as soon as we got someone with
some brains to look at it.  Comments from 9fans helped a lot
in getting people to review the change.  It did have the
advantage that it raised such a flap and embarassed enough
people that its not likely to happen again.

Lucent's woes has caused many researchers to leave.  Our lab is
showing the strain and we've just been told that we're going to
get hit with the next wave of firings.  In the last few years
we've lost Ken Thompson, Phil Winterbottom, Sean Dorward, and
just recently Sean Quinlan, and Rob Pike.

All the internal pressure at the moment is to create a more liberal
license and dump more stuff under the umbrella so that the people
leaving can continue their research elsewhere.  The back pressure
is just the usual unwillingness to make anything more liberal, the
cover your ass philosophy that most large orgs embrace.  That back
pressure continues to decrease mostly because the number of lawyers
is decreasing and those left have better things to do.

People afraid to use Plan 9 because of the current license are
certainly correct to do so, the IP clause is just too uncomfortable.
However, don't expect any changes for the worse.