But many lawyers have advised us that contract law is a useful parallel avenue. This approach has the advantage of empowering users of the software who are not necessarily copyright holders. The mantra of “the GPL is not a contract” is a mistruth that has been so often repeated that it became widely accepted and typically unchallenged. (We expect you'll hear this theory repeated even more loudly now that the our Vizio lawsuit brought the question to the forefront in a federal court case.) Yet, prominent legal experts outside of FOSS social circles have long scoffed at the assertion. Indeed, case law in the USA has held the opposite. In multiple cases, courts have been convinced, specifically, that the GPL operates as both a contract and a copyright license. The law appears clear on this, and this is among the reasons why we believe our motion to remand will succeed. In short, we'll say it plainly here and now for everyone: the GPL operates both as a copyright license and as a contract; litigation can proceed under either of those legal theories. Our motion to remand in the Vizio case explains the legal details as to why that's true.
As IANAL, I'm unable to judge if the cases they cite in the motion back up the "GPL is a contract too" idea though.
After Log4J this was the first thing that jumped at me, not the anticapitalist argument.
I don't understand what contract law has to do with this case. I was actually mildly alarmed to hear that they think using GPL software somehow enters them into a contract. If I read it correctly. That could become quite nasty and be very bad for FOSS if a court upheld the idea, since it's often corporations relying on FOSS and not the other way around.