Programmers Open Letter to ICGA on Rybka/Fruit

[Jeremy Bernstein]

http://ippolit.wikispaces.com/message/v ... 9/35036490

The Rybka Cloning Issue

Anthony Cozzie

Here's the link to Anthony's article: http://www.acoz.net/zappa/rybka-cloning/

[BB+]

Most people forget this, but Vasik's first attempt at an engine finished 53rd out of 54 engines in CCT6.

Said engine was 53rd only by "performance rating" (one of the tables sorts by this). It was tied for 48th-50th in points.

His procedure was to play games at 3-4 ply which would finish in 10 seconds or so.

This is ridiculously slow even on 2005 hardware. If I play 1s+25ms and take 4s per game on current hardware, I reach about 10 ply on average (with "modern" pruning). Maybe the Rybka version of "ply" is meant here (so add 2 or 3), and then it's in the right ballpark if you don't prune much.

To accurately measure 2-3 elo changes requires about 100,000 games; at 10 seconds per game that equates to about 10 days of computer time.

I'd say this overestimates the number of games required (you don't need 95% confidence most of the time). One might recall that some of Rajlich's former jobs involved heavy stats usage, so this should be right up his alley.

Finally, I find it incredibly amusing and hypocritical that the Rybka team is constantly attacking the various engines based on disassembling Rybka 1.1 (Strelka) and Rybka 3 (Ippolit).

Another question here (which would seem to be something for Rybka forum boffins to investigate) is whether any copyright infringement by Strelka and/or IPPOLIT has resulted in any actual damages to Rybka/Rajlich. For instance, were any R3 sales lost due to IPPOLIT?

[BB+]

The (Accidental?) Genius of Vasik Rajlich
[...]
His procedure was to play games at 3-4 ply which would finish in 10 seconds or so.

This is ridiculously slow even on 2005 hardware. If I play 1s+25ms and take 4s per game on current hardware, I reach about 10 ply on average (with "modern" pruning). Maybe the Rybka version of "ply" is meant here (so add 2 or 3), and then it's in the right ballpark if you don't prune much.

Now that I re-read this, the context was from a conversation in Mexico (second half of 2007). By that time, LK was working on the eval, and he was talking about fixed depth (9 ply?) games that took about 3 or 4 seconds each (he wanted, say, 80K games on an octal from an overnight run to resolve it to within 1 Elo).

Also, my general sense of the history of science is that many times "genius" happens to be not much more than accidental, particularly in experimental fields.

[kingliveson]

http://ippolit.wikispaces.com/message/v ... 9/35036490

The Rybka Cloning Issue

Anthony Cozzie

Here's the link to Anthony's article: http://www.acoz.net/zappa/rybka-cloning/

I think many people have been saying the following for a while:

Finally, I find it incredibly amusing and hypocritical that the Rybka team is constantly attacking the various engines based on disassembling Rybka 1.1 (Strelka) and Rybka 3 (Ippolit). I can't really condone it, but AFAIK disassembly is legal, while direct code theft is not.

[Joe P]

This has appeared elsewhere, and I copy it here:

Open letter to the ICGA about the Rybka-Fruit issue

Dear David Levy, Jaap van den Herik and the ICGA Board,

Recently the author of Fruit, Fabien Letouzey, wrote an open letter to the computer chess community where he raised the concern that Rybka 1.0 beta may be a derivative of Fruit 2.1 in this public post: http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37762

Since then it has emerged from highly respected sources like Zach Wegner, Bob Hyatt and others that there is a lot of evidence that has been accumulated over the last few years that Rybka 1.0 beta is a derivative of Fruit 2.1.

Zach Wegner has presented evidence of alleged significant copied/derived Fruit evaluations in Rybka 1.0 beta here: https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html

A collection of evidence of the many cases of alleged copied/derived Fruit structure, code & data appearing in Rybka 1.0 beta has been put together in this PDF by Mark Watkins: http://www.open-chess.org/download/file.php?id=304

It is also worth considering that prior to Rybka 1.0 beta, previous Rybka versions were many hundreds of Elo points weaker than the Rybka 1.0 beta version that suddenly emerged in public in December 2005, just a few months after the open source public release of Fruit 2.1 under the GPL license. That same month Rybka beta entered and won the International Paderborn Computer Chess tournament.

The evidence alleges that by using and deriving code, data and structure from Fruit 2.1, Vasik Rajlich was able to make dramatic and huge progress with "his" program Rybka to the detriment of his fellow competitors. In our view this has made competitions involving Rybka grossly unfair.

As chess programmers we find this overwhelming evidence compelling. We believe Rybka is a Fruit derivative albeit an advanced one.

It is very likely that later Rybka versions have derived and benefited from Rybka 1.0 beta and hence in the circumstances our view is they should also be considered derivatives of Fruit 2.1 until proven otherwise.

We wish to make an official complaint to the ICGA that Rybka is a Fruit 2.1 derivative. Furthermore we believe it is a breach of the GPL license under which Fruit 2.1 was released.

We believe as an unauthorized Fruit derivative Rybka's entry into ICGA events has been contrary to the ICGA rules and the rules of fair play.

We ask the ICGA to carefully review the evidence, assess its validity, and act accordingly.

We note that the ICGA is intending on setting up a tribunal to assess such allegations and we believe this evidence should be strongly considered in that process.

In addition, we think the ICGA should in future insist that all authors of entries to ICGA events must submit to the ICGA the same executable(s), that is taking part in the ICGA event, where they can be stored for future analysis of potential derivative claims should they arise. Each author should also make a full and clear statement as to the originality of the entry, its contributors and any acknowledgements. Should justified suspicions exist authors must be willing to submit source code on a private and confidential basis to a select group of impartial programmers to privately determine source code origin.

Co-signed by the following chess programmers,
Fabien Letouzey
Zach Wegner
Mark Uniacke
Stefan Meyer-Kahlen
Ed Schröder
Don Dailey
Christophe Theron
Richard Pijl
Amir Ban


Christ, do the above also sell time shares and generic Viagra. It's going to be a long hard fall for some guys who have been hoodwinked into signing this. The question is who will be out of a chair when the music stops. Love to know how many of the above truthseekers would help incur Fabiens legal costs in event of court proceedings. All?... Because certainly no egos drive any of this.

jp

PS: would absolutely love to get my hands on Shredder's code.

Anthony Cozzie
Tord Romstad
Ralf Schäfer
Gerd Isenberg
Johannes Zwanzger

[Joe P]

My thoughts exactly. I think it was a fair point while BB was unknown. But now the name is on the doccument I have no issues with its authenticity. BB is now on the ICGA Panel and I have no doubts about his credibility.

Who of those on the list is he, exactly?

Best,
Martin

He's not a signatory -- he's on the secretariat of the ICGA tribunal. BB+ is Mark Watkins.

Bildschirmfoto 2011-03-01 um 19.04.40.png

Mark "who"? God in heaven.

[Joe P]

This has appeared elsewhere, and I copy it here:

Open letter to the ICGA about the Rybka-Fruit issue

Dear David Levy, Jaap van den Herik and the ICGA Board,

Recently the author of Fruit, Fabien Letouzey, wrote an open letter to the computer chess community where he raised the concern that Rybka 1.0 beta may be a derivative of Fruit 2.1 in this public post: http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37762

Since then it has emerged from highly respected sources like Zach Wegner, Bob Hyatt and others that there is a lot of evidence that has been accumulated over the last few years that Rybka 1.0 beta is a derivative of Fruit 2.1.

Zach Wegner has presented evidence of alleged significant copied/derived Fruit evaluations in Rybka 1.0 beta here: https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html

A collection of evidence of the many cases of alleged copied/derived Fruit structure, code & data appearing in Rybka 1.0 beta has been put together in this PDF by Mark Watkins: http://www.open-chess.org/download/file.php?id=304

It is also worth considering that prior to Rybka 1.0 beta, previous Rybka versions were many hundreds of Elo points weaker than the Rybka 1.0 beta version that suddenly emerged in public in December 2005, just a few months after the open source public release of Fruit 2.1 under the GPL license. That same month Rybka beta entered and won the International Paderborn Computer Chess tournament.

The evidence alleges that by using and deriving code, data and structure from Fruit 2.1, Vasik Rajlich was able to make dramatic and huge progress with "his" program Rybka to the detriment of his fellow competitors. In our view this has made competitions involving Rybka grossly unfair.

As chess programmers we find this overwhelming evidence compelling. We believe Rybka is a Fruit derivative albeit an advanced one.

It is very likely that later Rybka versions have derived and benefited from Rybka 1.0 beta and hence in the circumstances our view is they should also be considered derivatives of Fruit 2.1 until proven otherwise.

We wish to make an official complaint to the ICGA that Rybka is a Fruit 2.1 derivative. Furthermore we believe it is a breach of the GPL license under which Fruit 2.1 was released.

We believe as an unauthorized Fruit derivative Rybka's entry into ICGA events has been contrary to the ICGA rules and the rules of fair play.

We ask the ICGA to carefully review the evidence, assess its validity, and act accordingly.

We note that the ICGA is intending on setting up a tribunal to assess such allegations and we believe this evidence should be strongly considered in that process.

In addition, we think the ICGA should in future insist that all authors of entries to ICGA events must submit to the ICGA the same executable(s), that is taking part in the ICGA event, where they can be stored for future analysis of potential derivative claims should they arise. Each author should also make a full and clear statement as to the originality of the entry, its contributors and any acknowledgements. Should justified suspicions exist authors must be willing to submit source code on a private and confidential basis to a select group of impartial programmers to privately determine source code origin.

Co-signed by the following chess programmers,
Fabien Letouzey
Zach Wegner
Mark Uniacke
Stefan Meyer-Kahlen
Ed Schröder
Don Dailey
Christophe Theron
Richard Pijl
Amir Ban
Anthony Cozzie
Tord Romstad
Ralf Schäfer
Gerd Isenberg
Johannes Zwanzger

Do the above also sell time shares.

[MoldyJacket]

If and when the complete picture unfolds and sufficient proof is produced, it would be a terrible travesty not to purse it in court. I understand those injured may not want to benefit personally, but that Cluster and proceeds could be donated for cancer research on their behalf instead of making even more money for Vas & company while running God knows what underneath the covers. I think it is a horrible business model anyway.

If it is not pursued, it will send a signal and motive others to do even more the same. A fund could be setup to move forward and I suspect those who purchased the product may even have claims. Save your receipts.

[kingliveson]

Things have quieted down a bit, so what is the latest on the investigation?

[hyatt]

progressing...