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Forking the code doesn't fork the copyright ownership. Stockfish still owns the code under their copyright regardless of whether it lives in their repository or in some fork of their codebase.

A forked project doesn't have the right to grant people licenses to code which they don't own.

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Licences can give the right to sublicense under the same terms. But the GPL does not, and each licensor gets the licence directly from the copyright holder.

That explains it perfectly, thank you. It also raises interesting questions about the metaphysics of copyright/intellectual property

Regardless, you can't sublicense a license you don't hold (anymore).

Thanks for making me stop and think twice about this.

Very good point.

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