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.
@pete can't think of a community more capital equipped to handle such frivolous lawsuits. if a core dev gets sued personally, I would donate thousands of dollars personally for legal fees, and I can imagine hundreds, if not thousands like me, and I'm certainly no whale. it shouldn't cost those developers one satoshi, nor take up too much attention, since I'm sure there are bitcoiner lawyers who would kill for the chance to take on this clown.
sad there's this new FUD now to deal with.
@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)