Hey Terry, hope you are well.Terry McCracken wrote: What will you say when the FSF finds Vas guilty of copyright infringement??? You sure don't have any problem slamming your peers to protect one dubious programmer. What the hell Ed?
good post TerryTerry McCracken wrote:Rebel wrote:Given that every reasonable chess program has all (or almost all) the ingredients as mentioned in the Zach & BB documents (mine certainly has all) makes a comparison hardly possible. Much of what's described in the document I either have done similar (and a lot earlier than good old Fabien) or is done in a general known but just in a somewhat different way of doing the same thing, namely, to evaluate a positional aspect of a position following his understanding of the aspect.
Problem with EVAL is (and with PST it's similar) there are not so much choices. There are not 10 or 20 ways to calculate mobility, only few. Same with other aspects, king safety, all programs evaluate the squares close to the enemy king. Furthermore a chess programmer is forced to do it in quick and simple solutions for speed reasons. So possible alternatives quickly shrink and programs tend to become similar in the techniques they use.
However what I would accept as damaging is an exact or a great similarity in the order of the evaluation ingredients. I had a quick look at the Fruit and Strelka EVAL and that doesn't appear the case, I leave this to the Rybka/Fruit/Strelka experts.
The point is, I have a hard time to believe that Vas (in 2005) took the Fruit sources as a base and changed the order of Fruit's EVAL because he foresaw a scenario he would become so famous that somebody would re-engineer his program an he possibly could be caught on exact order of the ingredients in EVAL.
I would say, no similarity, not guilty.
What will you say when the FSF finds Vas guilty of copyright infringement??? You sure don't have any problem slamming your peers to protect one dubious programmer. What the hell Ed?
Someone posted a quote from one of the FSF members, indicating Rybka took codes from Fruit and/or Crafty - enough to pursue the case. That being the case, IF the FSF do in fact pursue it, Vas will likely be found guilty.Rebel wrote:Hey Terry, hope you are well.Terry McCracken wrote: What will you say when the FSF finds Vas guilty of copyright infringement??? You sure don't have any problem slamming your peers to protect one dubious programmer. What the hell Ed?
Regarding the question, what will you say when the FSF frees Vas of guilt?
Pretty pointless huh?
Take care.
BB,Rebel wrote: Besides of that, yesterday I saw you posted the reverse engineered Rybka EVAL order from your notes. They did not match the Fruit EVAL order. I can not find it anymore. Did you remove it? Or am I in need for new glasses? Apologies in advance if the latter seems to be the case.
A remarkable coincidence.Rebel on Rybka Forum wrote:Mistake-2, BB was so kind to gimme the order of EVAL of Rybka 1.0 beta through reverse-engineering. You must have missed that.
Dang it zwegner!zwegner wrote:Jeez. The information is on page 2 of this thread. If you're too lazy: viewtopic.php?p=13622#p13622
Is it really necessary to accuse Mark of something untowards here?
. Or at least let him run back to Rybka forum and post his paranoia rants on how "the big evidence" (if at all ) he found was deleted. Then you point him to the thread. Actually ideas _are_ protected by copyright law. It seems crystal clear to me. If the idea is specified clearly and concisely and with specificity, then it is as protected as anything, ie the plot of a book/movie, etc. I don't think anybody wants to exclude sharing ideas. That has been a cornerstone of computer chess research since the 60's.Chris Whittington wrote:Everything is too simplistic for you, kid.Jeremy Bernstein wrote:Stockfish, Critter, Komodo. Which of those 3 engines do you claim violate rule #2? Can you back that assertion up?
And no, claiming that those engines benefit from the simple existence of Ippolit isn't valid. If you do, you are (once again) trying to blur the boundary between ideas and code. If you can demonstrate that these engines have unacknowledged stolen code, though, I'm sure we're all ears.
That said, I agree that Rule #2 could benefit from some specificity. In spirit, though, it's 100% correct.
Or would you prefer something like "Entrants can legitimately steal up to 95% of the code stolen by the previous year's WCCC. The returning WCCC is not subject to this clause, and may steal code as deemed appropriate. Winners demonstrated to have violated this rule retain their titles and merely push the upper boundary higher."?
Jeremy
Rebel wrote:That will keep me busy for a while
Mark, now that you here, allow me a few words to talk about the future of the ICGA. And if you think there is value in it please address it to the ICGA board members.
I see a looming scenario that future WCC cycles become worthless because the strongest engines can not participate due to rule no.2. The problem is already present. For the upcoming WC cycle the ICGA is already in the situation that 4-5 of the strongest engines, all candidates for the title, actually all of those 4-5 will have a top ranking when allowed. This number will increase the coming years because of the free source code out there estimated elo 3000+ What is the purpose any longer of a WC title if the strongest engines can't compete?
The ICGA is in need for a new rule no.2 that can stand the heat of the 2011 kitchen.
The ICGA also can play a major role in the restoration of the current chaos in computer chess land created by the clones. This small community needs new criteria, a new structure and hold on for programmers. A discussion about this is started at Rybka Forum. I proposed a brainstorm model that perhaps has a future.
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=22719
Thanks.
Taking IDEAS is not stealing. Taking algorithms is not stealing. ideas and algorithms are NOT protected by copyright law. It is quite deliberate that they are not protected, because the purpose of copyright law is to encourage the publication of innovation AND allow sufficient loopholes for others to build on that innovation. Something copyright law achieves by (a) timing out and (b) distinguishing between the idea and the specific expression of the idea. It creates even more loopholes on the idea/expression concept by introducing the "filtration" concept such that DIRECT COPY is lawful under certain specific circumstances as well.
In an attempt to circumvent the spirit of copyright law, certain programmer(s) have attempted to introduce extra conditions re tournament entry and so on. These conditions are being treated as onerous and unenforceable. A certain programmer has announced he has no intention of enforcement in any case. In a legal sense these extra conditions can be safely ignored. The particular programmer, unwilling to enforce his conditions himself (because he can't) now runs to tournament organisers, the icga and anyone else he can influence and tries to get them to enforce his terms for him.
The result is a mish-mash of inconsistent and self-contradictory and highly confusing rules of engagement for programmers, particularly new programmers.
The best course of action for programmers is the same course of action they have probably all been applying for years anyway, namely ....
Thanks very much for the open source, we will go through it backwards and forwards lawfully taking ideas. We reject your special fancy terms and conditions as onerous and unlawful and unenforceable. Bye and thanks for all the fish, so to speak.
Meanwhile, and to avoid sinking into meaningless oblivion, the icga should tell Hyatt to quit hassling them and other tournament organisers and rating lists and, if he feels so strongly about it, to go to law, otherwise shut up. Rule #2 is out of date and inconsistent with the current situation. It should be scrapped and tournament organisers operate on the basis that, unless a program is illegal/unlawful then it can be entered into any tournament or rating list.
I've never been happy with the "Search" function here, as it ignores "common" words -- and it seems that anything I want to find is always "common"Rebel wrote: BB,
I double checked, did a search on the word "notes" (even on "note") but the information simply is gone.
[...]
Care to explain ?
Thanks.
. A better way is simply to search by person, and then thumb through recent posts. I'm not sure I used the word "notes" in that post in any event (it seems that "listing" was the word choice). ], so as to be easier to find. Maybe I should have opened a new thread, though that again seemed extraneous.I will agree not to send "silly" PMs, if you agree not to make "silly" posts.Rebel wrote:That was before you started the 2 silly PM's, yes ?
Again you seem to be asking for a conclusion, while I would rather point you to the evidence, and let you decide and/or argue it through -- sorry if this is not what you wanted. In this regard, see 6.3 of RYBKA_FRUIT. I could expand the evidential enumeration therein [as 6.3 is a condensed patchwork of various points], but for you I see no point in that [and you'd have to assume that I did it correctly]. In this regard (for UCI parsing), I don't think Strelka's source code is a good surrogate for Rybka (should I conclude it's thereby not a clone/derivative?!Rebel wrote: Well, looks an easy job to me to compare the 3 UCI signatures of Fruit / Rybka / Strelka.
Do they match ?
). Better to look at Rick Fadden's disassembly (the link is in 6.3), if you want more details.What will you say when the FSF finds Vas guilty of copyright infringement???
Regarding the question, what will you say when the FSF frees Vas of guilt?
Pretty pointless huh?
Take care.
The FSF essentially exists to follow cases like this through (along with its legal arm, the SFLC), and has already decided to pursue it. I think (haven't heard in awhile, and France treats August as a month for vacation) they are currently chasing down contact details for all known R1-R232a distributors as the initial course of action, and will send them [in an official manner] their standard form letter, asking them to comply with the GPL restrictions regarding source code availability, blah-blah-blah.I really hope the FSF follows this one through, just so we all get to see you blame yet another organization (and everyone else) for Vas' misconduct...
BB+ wrote:I've never been happy with the "Search" function here, as it ignores "common" words -- and it seems that anything I want to find is always "common"Rebel wrote: BB,
I double checked, did a search on the word "notes" (even on "note") but the information simply is gone.
[...]
Care to explain ?
Thanks.
Zach indicated where the evidence is, though I seriously did consider making it a PDF [another hour of "billing time"
I also made a correction to the ordering in this post. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1559&start=50#p13748
I will agree not to send "silly" PMs, if you agree not to make "silly" posts.Rebel wrote:That was before you started the 2 silly PM's, yes ?
Again you seem to be asking for a conclusion, while I would rather point you to the evidence, and let you decide and/or argue it through -- sorry if this is not what you wanted. In this regard, see 6.3 of RYBKA_FRUIT. I could expand the evidential enumeration therein [as 6.3 is a condensed patchwork of various points], but for you I see no point in that [and you'd have to assume that I did it correctly]. In this regard (for UCI parsing), I don't think Strelka's source code is a good surrogate for Rybka (should I conclude it's thereby not a clone/derivative?!Rebel wrote: Well, looks an easy job to me to compare the 3 UCI signatures of Fruit / Rybka / Strelka.
Do they match ?
What will you say when the FSF finds Vas guilty of copyright infringement???Regarding the question, what will you say when the FSF frees Vas of guilt?
Pretty pointless huh?
Take care.The FSF essentially exists to follow cases like this through (along with its legal arm, the SFLC), and has already decided to pursue it. I think (haven't heard in awhile, and France treats August as a month for vacation) they are currently chasing down contact details for all known R1-R232a distributors as the initial course of action, and will send them [in an official manner] their standard form letter, asking them to comply with the GPL restrictions regarding source code availability, blah-blah-blah.I really hope the FSF follows this one through, just so we all get to see you blame yet another organization (and everyone else) for Vas' misconduct...
Assembling the case for monetary damages will then occur later. I'm not in the loop, but my impression is that it is essentially "certain" that the case will be seen through (one way or the other), according to Fabien's wishes. The evidence is more than sufficient, as is the magnitude of any benefits derived from Fruit-infringement. If the FSF didn't go through with this, one might wonder what the use of transferring copyright to them could possibly be.
As such, my opinion is that there is principally one endpoint at this juncture: a drawn-out court case [maybe in multiple jurisdictions, but as I say, the FSF/SFLC have little better to do -- this case is probably even a "big fish" to them!]. And as Don Dailey put it (amidst a barrage of other comments), the inevitable verdict of "guilty" for copyright infringement seems clear. The only question is the percentage award. Combined with the quirks of Polish copyright law (triple damages, and a 2x contribution to a "Ministry Fund for Creativity" -- see pages 1049-50 here, or Sections 79,1-2 of the Polish Copyright Act), I don't think that a maximal liability for Rajlich of 7 figures (in euros) is any exaggeration, though it depends on the exact percentages awarded, not to mention the actual extent of Rybka profitability.
OTOH, the FSF itself mostly cares about its "free software" philosophy, and only pursues damages on the behalf of those who transfer them copyright, at least until lawyers get involved [when they also ask for compensation therein]. Simply changing the "demo version" to be R3 instead of R232a should suffice for them. Similarly, I wouldn't think Fabien is against a reasonable settlement , though he also seems just as willing to let the FSF/SFLC grind the wheels of justice. But as CW recently put it [in a Rybka Forum thread remarkably free of spam!], in computer chess there's never compromise solutions, and comments from more than one "Rybka Forum insider" suggest the same.
