Updates on the Programmers Open Letter

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Two more programmers have signed the Open Letter, Shay Bushinsky and Volker Böhm.

Various news sites have picked up the story. ChessVibes obviously has pride of place. I haven't checked recently, but I don't know of any English language website that has done more than consolidate it, except maybe lousyatchess.blogspot.com (wow, Tord "needs no introduction"!).

Three German sites have mentioned it with some analysis, Heise the largest German techonology site (the English version h-online.com seems not to have the story), Spiegel Online (associated to Der Spiegel, the largest German newspaper), and the ChessBase.de frontpage [no linked story], the latter of which gives us the nitty-gritty about all the Rybka clones out there, with some mention that Rybka 1.0 Beta is now claimed to be "derived" (their inverted commas) from the code of Fruit -- actually maybe my mentioning ChessBase here is not completely apropos, as they curiously manage to omit any mention of the Open Letter.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

Two more programmers have signed the Open Letter, Shay Bushinsky and Volker Böhm.

Various news sites have picked up the story. ChessVibes obviously has pride of place. I haven't checked recently, but I don't know of any English language website that has done more than consolidate it, except maybe lousyatchess.blogspot.com (wow, Tord "needs no introduction"!).

Three German sites have mentioned it with some analysis, Heise the largest German techonology site (the English version h-online.com seems not to have the story), Spiegel Online (associated to Der Spiegel, the largest German newspaper), and the ChessBase.de frontpage [no linked story], the latter of which gives us the nitty-gritty about all the Rybka clones out there, with some mention that Rybka 1.0 Beta is now claimed to be "derived" (their inverted commas) from the code of Fruit -- actually maybe my mentioning ChessBase here is not completely apropos, as they curiously manage to omit any mention of the Open Letter.

Ironically, the ChessBase article features 2 links: the first to the Spiegel.de article, the second to the chess engines section of their online store! hahaha.

The issue of plagiarism is a hot topic in germany right now, since the defense minister just had to step down for the use of (lots of) uncited sources in his doctoral dissertation. That probably reached the international press, but you never know.

"Wer hat's erfunden...?"

Im Zuge der missglückten Doktorarbeit des früheren Verteidigungsministers zu Guttenberg sind Plagiatvorwürfe derzeit ein beliebtes Thema für die Medien. Auch Im Computerschach gab es immer mal wieder und gibt es derzeit aktuell den Vorwurf des Plagiats. Vasik Rajlich, der in den letzten Jahren das Computerschach mit seiner Rybka-Engine weitgehend dominiert hat, sieht sich durch eine Reihe von vermeintlichen Rybka-Clonen um die Früchte seiner Arbeit gebracht. Besonders dem Programmierer der Engine Strelka warf er vor, Rybka dekompiliert und den Code verwendet zu haben. Aus dem dann frei zugänglichen Strelka gingen dann einige andere Engines hervor. Im Zuge der Diskussion wurde nun wiederum Vasik Rajlich vorgeworfen, seinen einstigen Rybka 1.0 aus dem Code des Fruit-Autors Letouzey "hergeleitet" zu haben. Letouzey hatte den Code seiner Engine im Jahr 2005 als Open Source unter der GNU-Lizenz veröffentlicht, d.h., wer diesen nutzt - was erlaubt ist -, muss dann auch seinen eigenen Code zur freien Verwendung offen legen. Rybka ist allerdings nicht Open Source. Die Internatioal Computer Games Association soll den Fall nun klären und hat dafür eine Kommission gegründet.

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We have two German visitors here currently (February is a popular month to travel), both recent Bayreuth PhDs -- and on April 1 a third such "PhD" starts with us full time.

[zwegner]

We have two German visitors here currently (February is a popular month to travel), both recent Bayreuth PhDs -- and on April 1 a third such "PhD" starts with us full time.

Might we draw the conclusion you seem to be hinting at?