Not crazy - there's a rational self-interest in doing this.
But I'm not certain that the relevant players have the same consequence-fearing mindset that you do, and to be honest they're probably right. The theft is too great to calculate the consequences, and by the time it's settled, what are you gonna do - turn off Forster's machine?
I hope you're right in at least some cases!
> by the time it's settled
Why would the GPL settle? Even more, who is authorized to settle for every author who used the GPL? If the courts decided in favor of the GPL, which I think would be likely just because of the age and pervasiveness of the GPL, they'd actually have to lobby Congress to write an exception to copyright rules for AI.
A large part of the infrastructure of the world is built on the GPL, and the people who wrote it were clearly motivated by the protection that they thought that the GPL would give to what was often a charitable act, or even an act that would allow companies to share code without having to compete with themselves. I can't imagine too many judges just going "nope."
I think they meant "settled" as in "resolved."
I meant the same. I don't actually think that the GPL is an entity that can settle a court case; if I meant that I would have said the FSF or something. I mean that in order for it to resolve, a judge has to say that the GPL does not apply.
If ultimately copyright holds up against the models*, the GPL will be a permanent holdout against any intellectual property-wide cross-licensing scheme. There's nobody to negotiate with other than the license itself, and it's not going to say anything it hasn't said before.
* It hasn't done well so far, but Obama didn't appoint any SCOTUS judges so maybe the public has a chance against the corporations there.