GPL discussion, sense and nonsense

[Rebel]

this copying appears to go beyond what is (or has been) acceptable in the field of computer chess/games [and I strongly feel that this is the proper standard to use for "originality", as opposed to a "legalistic" one, where perhaps only "code" is considered], and I personally find the attempts to dismiss this all as happenstance (or "unimportant") to be a bit outré. That being said, there is also a tendency to exaggerate the Rybka/Fruit connection in some other circles. [And by now, I think Rybka 4 has almost zero connection to the Fruit origins].

Alright, I am in the process of changing my mind, not there yet, but I now find it more likely that Rybka started its life as Fruit thanks to the contributions of Zach and BB. Having said that I am interested to have a discussion about the sense and nonsense of GPL.

Sense: I sympathize with the sentiment to share in order to make progress, usually the more people, the more progress as everybody has their own set of unique idea's.

Nonsense: the stipulations of GPL are a piece of mud. They incite to entrapment or incitement, I don't know the right English juridical term. Big chance a judge will trash GPL as entrapment. It may go like this in a court room:

Judge - Mister X, what have you done to protect your work?
X - I released my code under GPL.

Judge - Is that all?
X - Yes, your honor.

Judge - do you also leave your car, house unlocked?
X - No, your honor.

Judge - Why then your code?
X - I don't know sir.

Judge - If you leave your car unlocked and it's stolen because of that do you think the assurance company will pay?
X - no sir.

Judge - I will tell you my verdict. Mister X, you are behaving like a bank that stores all its money on the street, puts a sign on it with the text: forbidden to steal and then you come into my court room to complain that all is stolen. That is entrapment Mister X. You have an obligation to protect. Now get out my court room as soon as possible at your own chosen speed.

---

I have looked at the internet for GPL lawsuits and found no case of a verdict, only settlements. Perhaps I should look deeper.

Remains the issue of moral. And actually I find the concept of Reverse Engineering (RE) and then calling it your own a lot more corrupt then taking something that is said free (but hey!, don't use it as your own) and use it as a base to make something of your own by tons of changes, even fundamental ones (mail-box to bit-board).

I think this Rybka=Fruit issue got too much attention. Reason: sloppy GPL stipulations.

I can imagine that people with a scientific / university background will differ as they are raised in the opinion and conviction that everything should be free and should be shared for progress reasons but then PLEASE don't add such silly stipulations as an obligation to release the source code of something that is far beyond the original work.

Ed

[benstoker]

this copying appears to go beyond what is (or has been) acceptable in the field of computer chess/games [and I strongly feel that this is the proper standard to use for "originality", as opposed to a "legalistic" one, where perhaps only "code" is considered], and I personally find the attempts to dismiss this all as happenstance (or "unimportant") to be a bit outré. That being said, there is also a tendency to exaggerate the Rybka/Fruit connection in some other circles. [And by now, I think Rybka 4 has almost zero connection to the Fruit origins].

Alright, I am in the process of changing my mind, not there yet, but I now find it more likely that Rybka started its life as Fruit thanks to the contributions of Zach and BB. Having said that I am interested to have a discussion about the sense and nonsense of GPL.

Sense: I sympathize with the sentiment to share in order to make progress, usually the more people, the more progress as everybody has their own set of unique idea's.

Nonsense: the stipulations of GPL are a piece of mud. They incite to entrapment or incitement, I don't know the right English juridical term. Big chance a judge will trash GPL as entrapment. It may go like this in a court room:

Judge - Mister X, what have you done to protect your work?
X - I released my code under GPL.

Judge - Is that all?
X - Yes, your honor.

Judge - do you also leave your car, house unlocked?
X - No, your honor.

Judge - Why then your code?
X - I don't know sir.

Judge - If you leave your car unlocked and it's stolen because of that do you think the assurance company will pay?
X - no sir.

Judge - I will tell you my verdict. Mister X, you are behaving like a bank that stores all its money on the street, puts a sign on it with the text: forbidden to steal and then you come into my court room to complain that all is stolen. That is entrapment Mister X. You have an obligation to protect. Now get out my court room as soon as possible at your own chosen speed.

---

I have looked at the internet for GPL lawsuits and found no case of a verdict, only settlements. Perhaps I should look deeper.

Remains the issue of moral. And actually I find the concept of Reverse Engineering (RE) and then calling it your own a lot more corrupt then taking something that is said free (but hey!, don't use it as your own) and use it as a base to make something of your own by tons of changes, even fundamental ones (mail-box to bit-board).

I think this Rybka=Fruit issue got too much attention. Reason: sloppy GPL stipulations.

I can imagine that people with a scientific / university background will differ as they are raised in the opinion and conviction that everything should be free and should be shared for progress reasons but then PLEASE don't add such silly stipulations as an obligation to release the source code of something that is far beyond the original work.

Ed

If Fruit was not GPL, would that change your judgment of the Fruit to Rybka situation?

[Mincho Georgiev]

As for the settlements, Ed, you are probably right:
http://gpl-violations.org/news/20060922 ... kfurt.html

[Tord]

Judge - Mister X, what have you done to protect your work?
X - I released my code under GPL.

But this is the wrong answer, and therefore renders the rest of your hypothetical court room dialog irrelevant. The work is protected by ordinary copyright laws. When you publish a program under the GPL, you claim copyright for the program, exactly like you would if you published a proprietary and commercial program. There is no difference.

Remains the issue of moral. And actually I find the concept of Reverse Engineering (RE) and then calling it your own a lot more corrupt then taking something that is said free (but hey!, don't use it as your own) and use it as a base to make something of your own by tons of changes, even fundamental ones (mail-box to bit-board).

And the GPL very explicitly allows you to do this, under very generous conditions, which include (among other things) charging money for your derived work or keeping the whole thing private. If these generous conditions are not good enough for you, just base your project on some other code base with a license better suited to your needs instead.

[Chris Whittington]

this copying appears to go beyond what is (or has been) acceptable in the field of computer chess/games [and I strongly feel that this is the proper standard to use for "originality", as opposed to a "legalistic" one, where perhaps only "code" is considered], and I personally find the attempts to dismiss this all as happenstance (or "unimportant") to be a bit outré. That being said, there is also a tendency to exaggerate the Rybka/Fruit connection in some other circles. [And by now, I think Rybka 4 has almost zero connection to the Fruit origins].

Alright, I am in the process of changing my mind, not there yet, but I now find it more likely that Rybka started its life as Fruit thanks to the contributions of Zach and BB. Having said that I am interested to have a discussion about the sense and nonsense of GPL.

Sense: I sympathize with the sentiment to share in order to make progress, usually the more people, the more progress as everybody has their own set of unique idea's.

Nonsense: the stipulations of GPL are a piece of mud. They incite to entrapment or incitement, I don't know the right English juridical term. Big chance a judge will trash GPL as entrapment. It may go like this in a court room:

Judge - Mister X, what have you done to protect your work?
X - I released my code under GPL.

Judge - Is that all?
X - Yes, your honor.

Judge - do you also leave your car, house unlocked?
X - No, your honor.

Judge - Why then your code?
X - I don't know sir.

Judge - If you leave your car unlocked and it's stolen because of that do you think the assurance company will pay?
X - no sir.

Judge - I will tell you my verdict. Mister X, you are behaving like a bank that stores all its money on the street, puts a sign on it with the text: forbidden to steal and then you come into my court room to complain that all is stolen. That is entrapment Mister X. You have an obligation to protect. Now get out my court room as soon as possible at your own chosen speed.

---

I have looked at the internet for GPL lawsuits and found no case of a verdict, only settlements. Perhaps I should look deeper.

Remains the issue of moral. And actually I find the concept of Reverse Engineering (RE) and then calling it your own a lot more corrupt then taking something that is said free (but hey!, don't use it as your own) and use it as a base to make something of your own by tons of changes, even fundamental ones (mail-box to bit-board).

I think this Rybka=Fruit issue got too much attention. Reason: sloppy GPL stipulations.

I can imagine that people with a scientific / university background will differ as they are raised in the opinion and conviction that everything should be free and should be shared for progress reasons but then PLEASE don't add such silly stipulations as an obligation to release the source code of something that is far beyond the original work.

Ed

Hypothetical:

Take the strongest open source and compiler/dev environment.

Go through the source, module by module, totally rewriting each module, using a different data structure. Each time the module is called, call it twice, once the original, and once the rewritten version, and check the data integrity of the two data structures, check the equivalence of the two module outputs. In other words make a functionally equivalent parallel module and check it off against the original.

Continue until all modules are changed, whilst still being equivalent. Then throw out the original modules.

Now you have a functionally equivalent copy of the original that you wrote yourself.

Repeat using two or three other strong open source programs. Now you have three or four sources equivalent to their originals, but all using the same data structure, and all you wrote yourself.

Using your experience and smartness take the best bits of each and construct a new engine.

In practice the above two steps would probably be short-circuited by only working on modules that were to be incorporated.

You now have an engine built from several engines but owing it's weights and (some) tables to other open source engines.

Add some ideas of your own.

You now have an engine built from your own ideas and from several other engines.

All the weights will be out of balance. Change all weights according to your own ideas of weights. Then get fine tuning.

Is this development process legal, GPL or no-GPL?

Is the final result legal?

[Rebel]

But this is the wrong answer, and therefore renders the rest of your hypothetical court room dialog irrelevant. The work is protected by ordinary copyright laws. When you publish a program under the GPL, you claim copyright for the program, exactly like you would if you published a proprietary and commercial program. There is no difference.

I think you missed the point of entrapment with the bank example I gave. Another one then: the music industry can rightfully claim copyright, but things change if they put their songs on the internet and add: don't download! And in many countries entrapment is not allowed. You can put anything in your stipulations, it's fruitless ( ) if the stipulation is against the law.

Ed

[Bo Persson]

Is this development process legal, GPL or no-GPL?

Is the final result legal?

Isn't his what reverse engineering is all about?

I once did that for a PC compatible BIOS. IBM actually made it open source by publishing their code in the Technical Reference Manual. But not GPL, of course.

I went through that and produced a functional equivalent for the Ericsson PC
(http://www.hogia.se/pcmuseum/datorer75- ... son-45.htm),
just like Compaq and a lot of others did for their machines. A lot of parallel testing aginst the real thing assured us that we were very close.

None of use were ever sued by IBM.

Seems like it must have been legal.

[emullins]

Nonsense: the stipulations of GPL are a piece of mud. They incite to entrapment or incitement, I don't know the right English juridical term. Big chance a judge will trash GPL as entrapment. It may go like this in a court room:

Judge - Mister X, what have you done to protect your work?
X - I released my code under GPL.

...

All one has to do to prevail in an infringement case is prove a work has been copied without permission. Protection is irrelevant.

The GPL is just a license that automatically grants permission under certain conditions. A work under a GPL license may still be copied with direct permission from the author. But to do so without that permission requires adherence to the copyleft.

It really is not complicated.

[BTO7]

this copying appears to go beyond what is (or has been) acceptable in the field of computer chess/games [and I strongly feel that this is the proper standard to use for "originality", as opposed to a "legalistic" one, where perhaps only "code" is considered], and I personally find the attempts to dismiss this all as happenstance (or "unimportant") to be a bit outré. That being said, there is also a tendency to exaggerate the Rybka/Fruit connection in some other circles. [And by now, I think Rybka 4 has almost zero connection to the Fruit origins].

Alright, I am in the process of changing my mind, not there yet, but I now find it more likely that Rybka started its life as Fruit thanks to the contributions of Zach and BB. Having said that I am interested to have a discussion about the sense and nonsense of GPL.

Sense: I sympathize with the sentiment to share in order to make progress, usually the more people, the more progress as everybody has their own set of unique idea's.

Nonsense: the stipulations of GPL are a piece of mud. They incite to entrapment or incitement, I don't know the right English juridical term. Big chance a judge will trash GPL as entrapment. It may go like this in a court room:

Judge - Mister X, what have you done to protect your work?
X - I released my code under GPL.

Judge - Is that all?
X - Yes, your honor.

Judge - do you also leave your car, house unlocked?
X - No, your honor.

Judge - Why then your code?
X - I don't know sir.

Judge - If you leave your car unlocked and it's stolen because of that do you think the assurance company will pay?
X - no sir.

Judge - I will tell you my verdict. Mister X, you are behaving like a bank that stores all its money on the street, puts a sign on it with the text: forbidden to steal and then you come into my court room to complain that all is stolen. That is entrapment Mister X. You have an obligation to protect. Now get out my court room as soon as possible at your own chosen speed.

---

I have looked at the internet for GPL lawsuits and found no case of a verdict, only settlements. Perhaps I should look deeper.

Remains the issue of moral. And actually I find the concept of Reverse Engineering (RE) and then calling it your own a lot more corrupt then taking something that is said free (but hey!, don't use it as your own) and use it as a base to make something of your own by tons of changes, even fundamental ones (mail-box to bit-board).

I think this Rybka=Fruit issue got too much attention. Reason: sloppy GPL stipulations.

I can imagine that people with a scientific / university background will differ as they are raised in the opinion and conviction that everything should be free and should be shared for progress reasons but then PLEASE don't add such silly stipulations as an obligation to release the source code of something that is far beyond the original work.

Ed

Hypothetical:

Take the strongest open source and compiler/dev environment.

Go through the source, module by module, totally rewriting each module, using a different data structure. Each time the module is called, call it twice, once the original, and once the rewritten version, and check the data integrity of the two data structures, check the equivalence of the two module outputs. In other words make a functionally equivalent parallel module and check it off against the original.

Continue until all modules are changed, whilst still being equivalent. Then throw out the original modules.

Now you have a functionally equivalent copy of the original that you wrote yourself.

Repeat using two or three other strong open source programs. Now you have three or four sources equivalent to their originals, but all using the same data structure, and all you wrote yourself.

Using your experience and smartness take the best bits of each and construct a new engine.

In practice the above two steps would probably be short-circuited by only working on modules that were to be incorporated.

You now have an engine built from several engines but owing it's weights and (some) tables to other open source engines.

Add some ideas of your own.

You now have an engine built from your own ideas and from several other engines.

All the weights will be out of balance. Change all weights according to your own ideas of weights. Then get fine tuning.

Is this development process legal, GPL or no-GPL?

Is the final result legal?

Seems to me this would be legal. Look in any motor sport. Take a boat....while you may have come up with the idea of a V haul bottom you really can't patten that. Same with car racing ....you dont have exclusive rights to a car body in general...only your specific model. Same with the engine. They can all have the same cubic inches ...they all have cams, push rods, cranks...its in the details that make the difference....what timing your using or push rod length to achieve the total cubic inches. As soon as someone wins in drag racing you see a car (simular) but not exact to the one thats winning. If in boat racing you could say V haul design is only mine then racing in general would be dead due to the fact logically there is obviously very few designs worthy in the first place. We are allowed to have two cars ...both with doors, tire, engines, AC, heat , and a million similar things yet be totally different right? Does Ford have the right to say all these derivatives are not original work? What pushes the envelope is competition and you dont have that if you can claim every module as your own. Rules should be simple.....no cloning-meaning EXACT code....derivative should only be allowed with in a certain family meaning- some exact code with mods added. Other then that ...in your example up above...if someone took the time to figure out between many engines what works what don't revamp it all in there own coding ...I see nothing wrong with it IMHO

Regards
BT

[hyatt]

this copying appears to go beyond what is (or has been) acceptable in the field of computer chess/games [and I strongly feel that this is the proper standard to use for "originality", as opposed to a "legalistic" one, where perhaps only "code" is considered], and I personally find the attempts to dismiss this all as happenstance (or "unimportant") to be a bit outré. That being said, there is also a tendency to exaggerate the Rybka/Fruit connection in some other circles. [And by now, I think Rybka 4 has almost zero connection to the Fruit origins].

Alright, I am in the process of changing my mind, not there yet, but I now find it more likely that Rybka started its life as Fruit thanks to the contributions of Zach and BB. Having said that I am interested to have a discussion about the sense and nonsense of GPL.

Sense: I sympathize with the sentiment to share in order to make progress, usually the more people, the more progress as everybody has their own set of unique idea's.

Nonsense: the stipulations of GPL are a piece of mud. They incite to entrapment or incitement, I don't know the right English juridical term. Big chance a judge will trash GPL as entrapment. It may go like this in a court room:

Judge - Mister X, what have you done to protect your work?
X - I released my code under GPL.

Judge - Is that all?
X - Yes, your honor.

Judge - do you also leave your car, house unlocked?
X - No, your honor.

Judge - Why then your code?
X - I don't know sir.

Judge - If you leave your car unlocked and it's stolen because of that do you think the assurance company will pay?
X - no sir.

Judge - I will tell you my verdict. Mister X, you are behaving like a bank that stores all its money on the street, puts a sign on it with the text: forbidden to steal and then you come into my court room to complain that all is stolen. That is entrapment Mister X. You have an obligation to protect. Now get out my court room as soon as possible at your own chosen speed.

---

I have looked at the internet for GPL lawsuits and found no case of a verdict, only settlements. Perhaps I should look deeper.

Remains the issue of moral. And actually I find the concept of Reverse Engineering (RE) and then calling it your own a lot more corrupt then taking something that is said free (but hey!, don't use it as your own) and use it as a base to make something of your own by tons of changes, even fundamental ones (mail-box to bit-board).

I think this Rybka=Fruit issue got too much attention. Reason: sloppy GPL stipulations.

I can imagine that people with a scientific / university background will differ as they are raised in the opinion and conviction that everything should be free and should be shared for progress reasons but then PLEASE don't add such silly stipulations as an obligation to release the source code of something that is far beyond the original work.

Ed

Hypothetical:

Take the strongest open source and compiler/dev environment.

Go through the source, module by module, totally rewriting each module, using a different data structure. Each time the module is called, call it twice, once the original, and once the rewritten version, and check the data integrity of the two data structures, check the equivalence of the two module outputs. In other words make a functionally equivalent parallel module and check it off against the original.

Continue until all modules are changed, whilst still being equivalent. Then throw out the original modules.

Now you have a functionally equivalent copy of the original that you wrote yourself.

Functionally equivalent is perfectly OK. Semantically equivalent is not. The latter is the point being debated.

Repeat using two or three other strong open source programs. Now you have three or four sources equivalent to their originals, but all using the same data structure, and all you wrote yourself.

Using your experience and smartness take the best bits of each and construct a new engine.

In practice the above two steps would probably be short-circuited by only working on modules that were to be incorporated.

You now have an engine built from several engines but owing it's weights and (some) tables to other open source engines.

Add some ideas of your own.

You now have an engine built from your own ideas and from several other engines.

All the weights will be out of balance. Change all weights according to your own ideas of weights. Then get fine tuning.

Is this development process legal, GPL or no-GPL?

Is the final result legal?

The entire thing would be perfectly legal according to the GPL because no _code_ whatsoever was copied. It was all written from scratch.