Fabien's open letter to the community

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BB+
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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by BB+ » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:05 am

I purchased Rybka believing that it was legitimate and that I was NOT selling out my principles by purchasing it.
To me, this is a fairly important point. Many of those who do not use IPPOLIT and successors choose this for ethical reasons. The same logic can be applied to Rybka/Fruit independent of whether a price is paid for it.

Here are two scenarios:
* Engine A copies from Engine Z, and I can get Engine A for free.
* Engine A copies from Engine Z unbeknownst to me, and I pay money for Engine A. I then find out about the copying.
I'm not really sure that the fact that Engine Z can sue Engine A for damages in the second case is the primary point. For instance, what if the Engine A sellers charged a fraction of what the Engine Z developers would have charged? Am I not ethically then in a situation more like the first case?

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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by tomgdrums » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:10 am

BB+ wrote:
I purchased Rybka believing that it was legitimate and that I was NOT selling out my principles by purchasing it.
To me, this is a fairly important point. Many of those who do not use IPPOLIT and successors choose this for ethical reasons. The same logic can be applied to Rybka/Fruit independent of whether a price is paid for it.

Here are two scenarios:
* Engine A copies from Engine Z, and I can get Engine A for free.
* Engine A copies from Engine Z unbeknownst to me, and I pay money for Engine A. I then find out about the copying.
I'm not really sure that the fact that Engine Z can sue Engine A for damages in the second case is the primary point. For instance, what if the Engine A sellers charged a fraction of what the Engine Z developers would have charged? Am I not ethically then in a situation more like the first case?

That is what it feels like to me BB+.

I have indeed chosen not to use Ippolit on down to Houdini because it ethically felt wrong to me. And because of Vas' lies I have inadvertently been going against my own ethics. And that does make me angry!! Especially with the Rybka team calling foul on everyone else.

So now it seems I have no choice but to delete all Rybkas from my computer or go to sleep a hypocrite. I don't like being put in that position by the Rybka team! But I will NOT go to sleep a hypocrite!

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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by kingliveson » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:14 am

Prima wrote:
thorstenczub wrote:
Prima wrote:Just what Dr. Rober (Bob) Hyatt and other reputable computer/programmers have been saying for years and now confirmed by Mr. Fabien Letouzy
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 31&t=37762
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 56&t=37762

what shall we do with the self alleged cloning hunters who hunted the wrong people,
blackmailed and censored computerchess boards for years ?
what shall we do with these mc_carthy dirt, those gestapo-guys with the narcistic personality disorder ?
It gets even 'better', Thorstenczub. Now a poster on CCC forum made this statement, when confronted about the apparent hypocrisy, deceit, censorship demonstrated by this individual and his entire chess computer chess gangs. I quote this person:
Personally, I'm waiting for this to play out further before making any big decisions.

Once Fabien says that he has examined all the facts for himself and states that Rybka is undeniably nothing more than a Fruit ripoff and which versions this applies to (statements that he would be prepared to defend in a legal sense), I will be perfectly happy to personally stop testing those versions and to advocate for their removal from the CCRL rating lists (although I'm only one of a dozen or so testers, so that decision would be a group one).


Which versions this applies to....and.... stop testing those versions??!!! Is this suppose to be a clause to still protect and support Ry*ka at all cost? This is hilarious in itself.

These guys just won't stop with the endless and unsupported excuses to keep using and testing Ry*ka. They even make a version-clause - indirectly calling Mr. Fabien Letouzy a liar and untrustworthy (my interpretation here). Why should Fabien Letouzey have to prove 'which Ry*ka version' is Fruit-based and, I quote here;
(statements that he would be prepared to defend in a legal sense)
?

But in a similar situation where Vas made the accusation that Ippoli and RobboLito is a Ry*ka 3 clone, the likes of this poster did not ask Vas to prove which version of Ippolit/RobboLito were Ry*ka 3 clone. Nor did they 'encourage' Vas to make accusing statements that he would be prepared to defend in a legal sense.

Also, the excuse that Ry*ka 3 source code was lost (or stolen?) is unbelievable. My personal opinion is that this is a ruse to give the impression that Ry*ka 4 is ' yet another original Ry*ka engine', or totally unrelated to its previous Fruit-based versions. I strongly believe that Fruit 2.1 was/is in Ry*ka 1.0 beta, therefore Fruit's concepts has to be transferred to Ry*ka 2, Ry*ka 3, and then to Ry*ka 4's versions. It may be tweaked but nevertheless, Fruit is present in all Ry*kas.

To surmise, based on the logic of these guys or Rybka-fan boys, it's okay for Vas to take an open source GPL code and increase his Ry*ka many hundred ELOs, then makes it close source/not release source - a direct violation of GPL license. He then goes commercial with the GPL-obtained code to improve subsequent Ry**a versions without releasing the source codes but he's not asked to defend his ethics, in relation to the Fruit-Ry*ka GPL license in court, despite numerous and respectable programmers' conclusion that Ry*ka is definitely a Fruit-clone. I could go on here.....

It's funny that now that Ry*ka is on the defensive side here, this poster is willing to "Personally, I'm wait for this to play out further before making any big decisions." Interesting concept. Where was this civil concept when Vas made an unfounded clone claim that Ippolit and RobboLito are Ry*ka 3 clones? Where was this civil gesture from the chessbase Sysops/ certain-forum-moderators before censoring and banning people from both forums and playchess server?

Are other sane people seeing these and the double standard hypocrisy going on here?
Why should any of this be surprising? Hypocrisy has no standards.
PAWN : Knight >> Bishop >> Rook >>Queen

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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by kingliveson » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:15 am

BB+ wrote:
There's some discussion about Vasik's alleged claim that he spoke to Fabien at some point about potential GPL issues wrt Fruit. I've been searching and here's the best I could find...
Same here, I was unable to corroborate Wael Deeb's claim of this via either recollection and/or search engines. It was a startling notion to me, though I guess I could see how one could imagine it, given that various backers have been pushing "Asssume the worst possible case against Vas -- even then Fabien seems OK with it" [and today the tune is "Is there anything new here that we didn't know 3 years ago?", and Fabien's opinion is treated as irrelevant because all the info is already public :!: ].

One of the most sane things said in the whole lot is from Eelco de Groot:
So this discussion is in the end not about copyright, but about honour, fair use of ideas, and recognition. Which are important enough of course, but inherently less objective to judge as they are guided by unwritten law.
Fabien I believe registered here...I would like to see him contribute to this thread.
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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by thorstenczub » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:17 am

there was an intersting point by Robert Houdart in CCC:
Graham Banks wrote:
This thread is supposed to be about the Rybka/Fruit issue, not about CCRL or myself.
Your reply would have been valid if the CCRL or yourself hadn't taken such an outspoken position in the debate.

As you probably know very well, the Rybka forum defines a "clone" as an engine that doesn't appear on "the professional rating lists like CEGT or CCRL". This shows how the CCRL and CEGT have been instrumental in skewing this whole issue in the favor of one (commercially motivated) point of view.

Robert
_________________

he is completely right IMO.
CEGT and CCRL have been instruments of some people who
wanted to betray the community about the truth concerning
cloning issues between fruit and rybka.

I wonder if we can find enough water to wash their hands clean.

Image

BB+
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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by BB+ » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:19 am

Fabien I believe registered here...I would like to see him contribute to this thread.
One advantage of OpenChess is that it has less traffic/noise than TalkChess, though it seems that various threads here attract some undesirable elements.

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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by BB+ » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:30 am

Your reply would have been valid if the CCRL or yourself hadn't taken such an outspoken position in the debate.

As you probably know very well, the Rybka forum defines a "clone" as an engine that doesn't appear on "the professional rating lists like CEGT or CCRL". This shows how the CCRL and CEGT have been instrumental in skewing this whole issue in the favor of one (commercially motivated) point of view.

Robert
To put this in context (as the link in the original was not copied over), this is from the text of "Rules in the forum (read before posting)" [by Felix Kling on Dec 28 2009] for the Computer Chess section of the Rybka forum. http://www.rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybka ... ?tid=14541
For those of you, who want to check which engines are clones and which aren't, I recommend looking at the professional rating lists like CEGT (http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/) or CCRL (http://computerchess.org.uk/). They check new engines, don't test clones and are independent. The lists are updated regularly, so you can expect them to be up to date. Also the engine's appearance (description on the website, engine name and so on) indicates if it's a serious engine or just a clone.

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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by kingliveson » Tue Jan 25, 2011 1:46 am

BB+ wrote:
Your reply would have been valid if the CCRL or yourself hadn't taken such an outspoken position in the debate.

As you probably know very well, the Rybka forum defines a "clone" as an engine that doesn't appear on "the professional rating lists like CEGT or CCRL". This shows how the CCRL and CEGT have been instrumental in skewing this whole issue in the favor of one (commercially motivated) point of view.

Robert
To put this in context (as the link in the original was not copied over), this is from the text of "Rules in the forum (read before posting)" [by Felix Kling on Dec 28 2009] for the Computer Chess section of the Rybka forum. http://www.rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybka ... ?tid=14541
For those of you, who want to check which engines are clones and which aren't, I recommend looking at the professional rating lists like CEGT (http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/) or CCRL (http://computerchess.org.uk/). They check new engines, don't test clones and are independent. The lists are updated regularly, so you can expect them to be up to date. Also the engine's appearance (description on the website, engine name and so on) indicates if it's a serious engine or just a clone.
This was essentially the reason I have made some not so complimentary comments about CCRL. When you couple that text with behaviour of some so called independent testers, it begs the question...

All that said, they are a private group and can do as they wish.
PAWN : Knight >> Bishop >> Rook >>Queen

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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by Jeremy Bernstein » Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:53 am

BB+ wrote:
Fabien I believe registered here...I would like to see him contribute to this thread.
One advantage of OpenChess is that it has less traffic/noise than TalkChess, though it seems that various threads here attract some undesirable elements.
No more so than on CCC, but YMMV. KWIM?

jb

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Re: Fabien's open letter to the community

Post by Uly » Tue Jan 25, 2011 8:44 am

Jeremy Bernstein wrote:KWIM?
No, I had to look up KWIM on the internet.

...

Yes, I know what you mean, I still dislike acronyms :(

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