Programmers Open Letter to ICGA on Rybka/Fruit

[Harvey Williamson]

I guess we can discuss what this thread is about or we can discuss the very interesting topic of if Beta testers should have to pay for the beta's they test

[Uly]

I sent you a free version of Hiarcs when you were a moderator on the Hiarcs forum so I guess you are an employee to.

I considered myself an employee of the Hiarcs Forum back when I was moderator and team captain, yes.

Seems simple to me:

Work is done.

+

You get products for free (as in, if you didn't do the work, you'd not receive payment).

=

It's a job.

(for instance, there's no difference between being paid with money and buying Hiarcs, and just getting Hiarcs without the exchange of money)

[Harvey Williamson]

I sent you a free version of Hiarcs when you were a moderator on the Hiarcs forum so I guess you are an employee to.

I considered myself an employee of the Hiarcs Forum back when I was moderator and team captain, yes.

Seems simple to me:

Work is done.

+

You get products for free (as in, if you didn't do the work, you'd not receive payment).

=

It's a job.

(for instance, there's no difference between being paid with money and buying Hiarcs, and just getting Hiarcs without the exchange of money)

If it is a job it is one I lose money on and a lot of money. My Electricity bill from testing is >$50 a month I pay that myself. I

[Jeremy Bernstein]

I guess we can discuss what this thread is about or we can discuss the very interesting topic of if Beta testers should have to pay for the beta's they test

The issue raised is relevant, Harvey. Just in your last post you spoke of "we", meaning "HIARCS", although you contend that you're not an employee, because you don't get money. You get paid in kind, though, via software (the classical beta tester is either an employee, or is a valued customer (e.g. purchased the software) who is granted the "privilege" of testing buggy pre-releases), and maybe via "glamour", in that your name is brought into contact with software that people find cool.

I sent you a free version of Hiarcs when you were a moderator on the Hiarcs forum so I guess you are an employee to. Come on this is crap. Vas sends me Rybka for free we send him Hiarcs. We send Hiarcs to lots of other programmers and GM's as do other authors. What is your point?

(emphasis mine)

But you _are_ somehow part of the organization "HIARCS", you represent the company on the forum, you travel on their behalf, write open letters regarding alleged pirate activity, etc. And some people believe (I am not among them, I might note) that this is a conflict of interest for your work on the tribunal. So you can continue to play coy and pretend like you don't know what anyone's talking about, or you could address the topic head-on.

jb

[Harvey Williamson]

I guess we can discuss what this thread is about or we can discuss the very interesting topic of if Beta testers should have to pay for the beta's they test

The issue raised is relevant, Harvey. Just in your last post you spoke of "we", meaning "HIARCS", although you contend that you're not an employee, because you don't get money. You get paid in kind, though, via software (the classical beta tester is either an employee, or is a valued customer (e.g. purchased the software) who is granted the "privilege" of testing buggy pre-releases), and maybe via "glamour", in that your name is brought into contact with software that people find cool.

I sent you a free version of Hiarcs when you were a moderator on the Hiarcs forum so I guess you are an employee to. Come on this is crap. Vas sends me Rybka for free we send him Hiarcs. We send Hiarcs to lots of other programmers and GM's as do other authors. What is your point?

(emphasis mine)

But you _are_ somehow part of the organization "HIARCS", you represent the company on the forum, you travel on their behalf, write open letters regarding alleged pirate activity, etc. And some people believe (I am not among them, I might note) that this is a conflict of interest for your work on the tribunal. So you can continue to play coy and pretend like you don't know what anyone's talking about, or you could address the topic head-on.

jb

I thin it is a conflict of interest to post here on this topic so I will leave you to it. I will be back when the final report is published,

[thorstenczub]

it remains the problem that harvey is in a situation where he is stretched between the interest of the company he works for (he is a member of the hiarcs team, a moderator in the hiarcs forum,
a sysop on chessbase playserver) and the decisions of the panel. its completely unimportant if he is in the panel or in the secretary. he is not objective. he is pro hiarcs. and that makes it impossible to do a job good, or the way one would expect somebody to do such a job.

he should resign this function.
his rigid method and how he judged about the "cloning" issue makes him a person not capable
for such a job.

...

harvey williamson cannot be part of a panel of secretary that
SOLVES the rybka issue.

Well, think of it this way. Harvey represents the interests of commercial, closed-source computer chess. Bob represents the interests of academic, open-source computer chess. Mark Lefler is the author of NOW, founder of the chess programming wiki, not sure where he fits in, although it's worth noting that he was on Team Anand (which HIARCS supported). Not sure if that means that he works for HIARCS, or if he was doing other stuff.

I have accused Harvey of lots of things in the past, and we mostly don't see eye to eye, but I don't think he's anti-anything-specific except for software piracy, with a special place in the hell of his heart for chess engine clones. Of course he's pro-HIARCS and pro-commercial. But if you follow his emails and actions, you'll see that he's been consistent (also shrill, obtuse, blind, unjust, etc.) in his quixotic battle against what he perceives* to be the products of software piracy.

* Harvey doesn't have the technical chops, as far as I can tell, to actually make this determination himself, which is why his actions and words in the past have been so infuriating to those who actually go to the trouble to think about these issues, attempt to accumulate evidence, before starting name-calling, instituting bans, etc.

Every person with an engine that competes in tournaments stands to gain from Vas' alleged wrongdoing. I don't think there's a single person appropriate for the job that doesn't stand to gain somehow.

As long as Bob and Mark provide a foil to Harvey (and Harvey and Mark to Bob, and Bob and Harvey to Mark), he's probably no worse than any of the other choices. The biggest issue with him has been his ability to institute policy with no checks or oversight in the past, demonstrating his personal leaning toward dictatorial behavior. In this case, he has 2 equal partners who will (hopefully) ensure that he doesn't get out of hand.

Or would you prefer Conkie?

Jeremy

this is all true jeremy. but fact is that harvey is a team member of
hiarcs team. and hiarcs could benefit from the decision to take away
rybka titles. and hiarcs would get a title.
so how can harvey objectively DECIDE about this topic ????

he is involved.
he is a member of the team.

again: in a case of murder, or any other crime, would you allow a family member of the
assasinator/murderer to be in the jury and decide about the punishment ?

[thorstenczub]

There are various names I might suggest if someone needs to step down, such as Gerd Isenberg (even though he signed the letter), or Remi Coulom (I can't imagine his being the Programmers Representative on the ICGA Board would be considered "conflicting", but I also can't imagine someone failing to bring it up ).

Yes. Gerd is a good person to replace Harvey.
He is very long in the business.
knows the people involved.
and can program.

and gerd was no moderator. did not ban or censor people.

[zwegner]

it has transpired that there is evidence that pre-Fruit Rybkas contained significant portions of Crafty,

One of these I have corroborated (the Edwards TB ep code). Another I currently have doubts about, as the offsets in the structs in Rybka and Crafty do not match. This might because we haven't found the right Crafty version yet, or because this Rybka version deleted some of the struct members. Or it might be that Rajlich managed to accidentally make a typo somewhere in the pawn_hash clearance, just as Bob did -- coincidences do happen.

Yes--as I mentioned in an email to Bob, I have not yet decoded all the terms in the pawn hash table. I just noted that not all terms are initialized, they are initialized out of order, and one term is initialized twice. I would guess that the term is passed_w, as it is in Crafty, but that is not confirmed yet.

I think Zach has found more evidence of re-use of Crafty code, but it is not public yet. Once the extent of any copying is understood, the weightiness of the copied elements must be explored. It seems that most of it (currently) involves a "Crafty chassis" for more mundane things, while search/eval seem to have been replaced, at least to some degree. I'm not sure (say) whether CCT6 would have accepted Rybka if the extent of Crafty overlap had been known -- that's probably just a hypothetical inquiry. Recall also that this was merely a "private" version of Rybka, so having Crafty parts might not be so derelict for some purposes. All of this is somewhat tangential to the Fruit/Rybka story per se, though it obviously has some circumstantial impact.

Yep--the latest thing I've found, which might be interesting to the public at large:

El Chinito was once found to be a clone of Crafty. The central piece of evidence was that it had a function almost identical to EvaluateMates() in Crafty, and checked the return value of the function against 99999. The function could never return that value though.

Turns out Rybka 1.6.1 copied the same bug.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

Turns out Rybka 1.6.1 copied the same bug.

Ouch, that's embarrassing.

jb

[Uly]

If it is a job it is one I lose money on and a lot of money.

So, why didn't you send me a copy of Hiarcs 13 when it was released? Easy, I was no longer working as team captain, I shouldn't have received payment, which proves that it was a job.

I was fired as team captain because you thought I had a conflict of interests when you found I was moderator of Rybka Forum, if you applied the same standards you'd resign your position in the panel.