- Giving attribution to the source, e.g., by confuscating a GPL copy into the manual, when you are making the most money in the chess 'product' scene on a ripped Stockfish, is the least they could have done.
- Chessbase's CEO on their official blog (now deleted) stated that they developed the engine from scratch. They also took a newer version for ripoff and compared it to an older version of Stockfish to claim their Fat Fritz 2/Houdini 6 engines are powerful.
- However lousy their terms are, free software licenses are enforceable by law. It will set an example. Since we are on the topic of chess, a threat is always more assertive than execution. Big tech joined FOSS forces for one simple reason - they could lose more than they could win.
- Stockfish did not suffer significant monetary damage since they don't have a commercial product people already insinuated that there would be no extraordinary financial settlement.
> need to settle than argue the legality
It is a vague and circumstantial argument. In practical terms, since it's already been ~1.5 years, a settlement (1-year leverage + entire credit + foss.chessbase.com + GPL enforcement) is enough for the plaintiff. Also, the only time the defendant in a lawsuit agrees to settle out of court is when they expect the trial to be more expensive than the settlement. Generally, this happens when the plaintiff's case is so strong that the defendant is confident the plaintiff will win in court. I agree with the no-one-sided landslide victory; that's what settlement means. Would you not say, given the settlement terms, Stockfish (GPL enforcement) won? The entire open-source community base those enforcements.
LOL, don't tell me you are from a technical background