Defendant contends that Plaintiff’s reliance on
the unsigned GNU GPL fails to plausibly demonstrate
mutual assent, that is, the existence of a contract.
Not so. The GNU GPL, which is attached to the
complaint, provides that the Ghostscript user agrees
to its terms if the user does not obtain a
commercial license. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant
used Ghostscript, did not obtain a commercial
license, and represented publicly that its use of
Ghostscript was licensed under the GNL GPU. These
allegations sufficiently plead the existence of a
contract. See, e.g., MedioStream, Inc. v. Microsoft
Corp., 749 F. Supp. 2d 507, 519 (E.D. Tex. 2010)
(concluding that the software owner had adequately
pled a claim for breach of a shrink-wrap license).
Plaintiff alleges that Defendant
used Ghostscript, did not obtain a commercial
license, and represented publicly that its use of
Ghostscript was licensed under the GNL GPU. These
allegations sufficiently plead the existence of a
contract."
I see nothing in the decision that says the court would have found a contract without these allegations being true.
Parent is nitpicking the different between the court ruling that the contract is likely to exists and the contract actually existing. For the former, plaintiff's allegations are absolutely necessary, for the latter - not so much.
In a sense, one can't say that "only if plaintiff's allegations are true, a contract exists" because plaintiff's arguments can be bullshit and the contract may still be valid for other reasons, even if no court would recognize it without proper evidence.
Hope that helps. And yes, it is a nitpick on the semantics of logic. Parent understands what the court ruled, the issue was solely with your post being (possibly amusingly) ambiguous to people dealing with too much formal logic.
Apparently parent is an intuitionist ;)