Well, you're right; it doesn't look good. At least on its face, the license
prohibits any modification of any kind. Whatever Cobalt may be doing with
Redhat Linux, it's probably by agreement between those two parties. Even if
it's not, and Cobalt is itself violating Redhat's license, your friend is
probably not thereby outside the provisions of the Cobalt license. As to
your suggestion of having Gerald do his magic, I can't tell you that it
wouldn't violate the license, because it would. Whether Cobalt would care
is a separate question. You might start talks with Cobalt to see if they'll
grant Gerald a separate license to do his thing.