GPL discussion, sense and nonsense

[hyatt]

Donninger is the only commercial author that comes to mind.

I'd have to search the computer-go archives (which seem to have disappeared), but he also commented (mid-2000s?) on how worthless (or maybe incentive-less) it was from the standpoint of a commercial guy to write such papers.

There is obviously no financial incentive. Just a moral one. I believe in the idea of "someone helps you, you then help someone else." I received lots of advice when I first started, and I have done my best to explain what I have learned and used. Fortunately, many others feel the same way, and at the present, the commercials are not even clearly "in front" any longer... What is important is for the front-runners to explain what they are doing so that others can then duplicate and then leap-frog to keep progress marching on.

[orgfert]

What is important is for the front-runners to explain what they are doing so that others can then duplicate and then leap-frog to keep progress marching on.

I would frame it more precisely than progress. The furtherance of the curious intellect sounds better. The principle of man is to extend the boundaries of understanding. Not considering GPL violations for the moment, the hoarding of a new understanding for profit at the expense of peers on whose ideas the hoarded knowledge is built may not be a sin but it is a lesser thing than sharing the new understanding with the peers on whose shoulders one is standing.

And some of the commercials eventually tell secrets long held, like Ed has done. And maybe a tight fraternity of commercials and close associates do share, but they do not share in the public forums except rarely when the beans have been spilled.

[Tord]

BTW, are you sure Fabien didn't invent LMR? Or am I just misinformed?

You are misinformed.

The first strong, popular open source program I am aware of that used LMR was Pepito. The idea is a lot older than that, its origins must be considered lost in antiquity. Back in 2004, the idea was widely known, but nobody apart from Sergei Markoff and myself seemed to believe in it. I used to pester the CCC with lots of posts about the technique, desperately trying to convince people to at least give it a try. Fabien finally gave in and implemented it in Fruit 2.0 (initially in a simplified version which didn't re-search in case of a fail high on a reduced depth search). At the time, Fabien didn't like the idea and wanted it to be disabled (there was a UCI parameter for switching it on and off) by default. Enabling it was a last-minute decision, caused by the stubborn insistence of beta tester Joachim Rang.

In my opinion, most of the discussion in this thread is silly and 15 or 20 years outdated. Carefully guarding secrets with the hope of gaining commercial advantage is pointless, because strength is no longer an important selling point. All reasonably bug-free modern chess engines are so much stronger than the average human player that they for all practical purposes become almost completely equivalent. Apart from an extremely tiny minority (which for obvious reasons is overrepresented on this message board), people just don't care about strength. If you want to make money from computer chess, target the computing platforms people actually use (i.e. cellphones, not PCs), and focus on features, beautiful graphics, and good ways to dumb down the program, not on maximum playing strength. Glaurung on the iPhone has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, and in the countless e-mails I have received with wishes for future versions, noone has complained that it's too weak.

Also, even if you do care about strength, openness makes it so much faster and easier to improve, both on the community level and on the individual level. Stockfish isn't strong despite being open source, it's strong because it's open source.

[Hood]

You are biased against commerce. ....
That would be a valid impression, right or wrong.

Ed

Hi,

I do not have such an impression.

The science and commerce is having differrent targets, language.

The compromise between them is the difficult task. Science is working for all community, commerce is working for itself.
Newton was not payed by his rules and developing them but for differrent job, most probably. The rules was his extra work.

You made your Pro Deo avaiable for free to everyone. I think you understand the problem. Money, making business are not dominant matters. You and Bob are similar in that. No point to argue.

Rgds
Hood

Rgds
Hood

[Hood]

because strength is no longer an important selling point ................

Hi,

i think that it is partial trueth, only .

You have forgotten about the market of the computer programm aided chess: corr chess, advanced chess, professional chess laboratory preparation etc.

Rgds
Hood