Evidence that the bitcoin white paper was released under a MIT license: https://twitter.com/RME/status/1352237110170935298?s=20
https://web.archive.org/web/20090106201347/https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/
Not as clear as you might want though; not going to blame people for declining to risk a legal fight over that level of nuance.
@pox But, remember that your examples are more "boring" lawsuits with fewer PR implications.
@pete true. also true: some lawyers are very, very good at their jobs, if you can afford them.
but in any case, this is more about demonstrating a spine and saving noobs from scammers. bitcoin's defensive strategy cannot be top lawyers, because laws can and eventually will be changed ad-hoc to fight it. I'm happy this fat asshole is helping the project decentralize. CSW is a hormetic stressor.
@pete we got resources as well. it's not as bad when there's a team behind it. e.g. whenever I worked with lawyers on corporate patents, a good lawyer makes sure the impact on me as a developer is quite minimal. mostly asks some technical questions for clarification. it's all about having enough money to hire a sufficiently independent and competent legal team. a few dozen BTC takes care of that easily (12 BTC already donated to cobra)