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I am not surprised they didn't want to spend their time on litigation.

It's sad though there is no consequences for ChessBase. They got a double shot: use someone's else code ignoring the licence and the worst that could happen to you if you're caught is you comply with the license. Not a happy precedent this one.

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There's a list of consequences. They revolve around admitting to fault publicly and committing to supporting & following the licensing agreements.

If the worst is a public mea culpa and following the agreements you should've done in the first place, that barely seems like a deterrent to infringe the license.

Might as well create a crawler bot on github and slurp up all the GPL/AGPL for your new AI-coding startup, iterate fast, make profit, then pay a pittance in legal fees and a small "We're sorry".

The fines and penalties are deferred. If they violate the agreement again, they pay. They're basically on the equivalent of probation, which is what the plaintiffs wanted in the first place.

> Might as well create a crawler bot on github and slurp up all the GPL/AGPL for your new AI-coding startup, iterate fast, make profit

This has already been done.[1]

1. https://copilot.github.com/

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