I would like to clarify a couple of things that perhaps I have not well expressed in my post.M ANSARI wrote:I think you failed to listen properly to the question. The question was how he got started and when he got started Fruit was not available as source. I see nothing wrong with going through all papers before you get started on a project as that give you a solid foundation. If he would have started from a source code engine like Crafty (he mentions that) I doubt he would have been able to see what is missing or how things could be improved. I wouldn't laugh at this as he seems to be on the right track. Maybe he saw something that everyone had missed and thus that is why he was able to get this monumental jump in chess engine strength. Something no other chess programmer was able to do. Maybe other chess programmers would have done better to also read up on the basics and set a solid foundation before seeing source code and figuring why the ideas in those sources work, or why there would be a better way to make an idea work better.
1) Reading papers is a good thing to do. If from my write it seems I think is not then I apologize because I have not well expressed my opinion.
2) The question was: "What chess engines in public domain when you got started had the biggest influence on the earliest versions of Rybka?" The question was not "What ideas /literature influenced you more?"
Now the point is that he is not answering to that question, but he is trying to "play hide", to avoid the direct answer, and found a safe but not pertinent answer in academic papers.
3) He talks about Crafty. Crafty is NOT a GPL program. Its sources are freely available, but it is not a GPL program, this makes an enormous difference. Perhaps for not software license specialist or not programmers this appears as almost tha same, but it is absolutely not the same and Vas knows it very well. He can speak about Crafty (not that also in this case he tries to avoid saying he took Crafty's sources for a reading) just because is not GPL otherwise, IMHO, he would have skipped also that part The difference is that if use code from a GPL software in my program I am legally forced to release _also_ my program as open-source. If the original software is not GPL then I am not.
I remain on my opinion, I would have had a better impression of him if he had stripped that question and the corresponding answer from the list.