Fabien's open letter to the community

[tomgdrums]

Well, it looks like I am going to have to delete Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 from my computer. I am not being facetious either.

On principle I have stayed away from the Ipps and Houdini and now to stay principled I am not going to be able to continue using Rybka.

Makes me sad, but that is the way it is.

(it actually makes me a little angry as well since I paid for Rybka...I wonder if I can get my money back?)

[mwyoung]

Well, it looks like I am going to have to delete Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 from my computer. I am not being facetious either.

On principle I have stayed away from the Ipps and Houdini and now to stay principled I am not going to be able to continue using Rybka.

Makes me sad, but that is the way it is.

(it actually makes me a little angry as well since I paid for Rybka...I wonder if I can get my money back?)

Nice to see you are going to be consistent and stand by your principles. I wonder if others will be consistent? Mr. Banks?

[Albert Silver]

Well, it looks like I am going to have to delete Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 from my computer. I am not being facetious either.

On principle I have stayed away from the Ipps and Houdini and now to stay principled I am not going to be able to continue using Rybka.

Makes me sad, but that is the way it is.

(it actually makes me a little angry as well since I paid for Rybka...I wonder if I can get my money back?)

I don't agree. Even in a worst case scenario, where there is incontrovertible proof of wrong-doing, the buyer who acted in good faith is never legally or ethically liable.

Suppose, for example, that Intel is proven today to have ignored patents owned by some guy on key components in the CPU you have in your machine. Is your only ethically correct course to remove the CPU and toss it out the window? Of course not. The guy (in this hypothetical situation) can sue and get his due and that is that. Whatever money you the buyer spent that went to the wrong person would be redirected via the legal system. This burden of responsibility assuredly does not fall upon the buyer.

[tomgdrums]

Well, it looks like I am going to have to delete Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 from my computer. I am not being facetious either.

On principle I have stayed away from the Ipps and Houdini and now to stay principled I am not going to be able to continue using Rybka.

Makes me sad, but that is the way it is.

(it actually makes me a little angry as well since I paid for Rybka...I wonder if I can get my money back?)

I don't agree. Even in a worst case scenario, where there is incontrovertible proof of wrong-doing, the buyer who acted in good faith is never legally or ethically liable.

Suppose, for example, that Intel is proven today to have ignored patents owned by some guy on key components in the CPU you have in your machine. Is your only ethically correct course to remove the CPU and toss it out the window? Of course not. The guy (in this hypothetical situation) can sue and get his due and that is that. Whatever money you the buyer spent that went to the wrong person would be redirected via the legal system. This burden of responsibility assuredly does not fall upon the buyer.

Well a CPU is a much more high dollar investment and therefore it is rarer for things to get THAT far because of all the money involved. And NO I would wait on the CPU and try to get my money back first before tossing it. Reasons? 1) The Computer is essential to my everyday work and therefore I would have to wait for restitution and a suitable replacement. But once that happened..yeah it is gone!

Now with a chess engine it is NOT essential to my everyday work or living. And it is a small dollar item when compared to an entire computer. It is not okay for Vas to have done the same thing that others are being accused of. I have not used the other questionable engines and NOW can no longer use Rybka. I can not live by a double standard.

[Matthias Gemuh]

This means (to me), there is most probably an ethical issue or case "Fruit versus Strelka(1)", but not a legal one between these two. This distinction should be made for precision of discussion. Also, we don't have to assume necessarily that Strelka 2.0(!) is identical in that respect, to any Rybka. But as for the initial, first Strelka and Rybka 1.0 beta, I remember that a couple of identical bugs and/or output (considering depth+2) e.g. in strange positions were posted here. That didn't leave any room for doubt IMO.

Of course, having no direct copy & paste from Fruit into Strelka (considered to be based on re-engineering from a binary) doesn't prove that there is no copy & paste Fruit code in Rybka 1.0. But it also doesn't prove the opposite!

Anyway, if code was not "taken directly" like in copy & paste but rewritten, then I guess there are no legal issues in terms of licenses and/or copyright, but certainly a question of ethics...

"rewritten" ?

Implemented algorithms were "translated" to a bitboard infrastructure.
The translator ends up with a working implementation of an algorithm he may never have been able to code from scratch.
It is "copy and paste" with unavoidable adaptations/translations.

That is how DanChess once cloned Crafty's evaluation, and was condemned in this forum as a clone.

Matthias.

[Gino Figlio]

Well, it looks like I am going to have to delete Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 from my computer. I am not being facetious either.

On principle I have stayed away from the Ipps and Houdini and now to stay principled I am not going to be able to continue using Rybka.

Makes me sad, but that is the way it is.

(it actually makes me a little angry as well since I paid for Rybka...I wonder if I can get my money back?)

I am not sure why you would do something like that. The potential problem is between the real author and the one that stole code. Neither one of them get anything out of your suggested actions.

[tomgdrums]

Well, it looks like I am going to have to delete Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 from my computer. I am not being facetious either.

On principle I have stayed away from the Ipps and Houdini and now to stay principled I am not going to be able to continue using Rybka.

Makes me sad, but that is the way it is.

(it actually makes me a little angry as well since I paid for Rybka...I wonder if I can get my money back?)

I am not sure why you would do something like that. The potential problem is between the real author and the one that stole code. Neither one of them get anything out of your suggested actions.

It has nothing to do with what either author gets or doesn't get from my actions. It is about being consistent in my actions and thoughts. Period.

[Gino Figlio]

Well, it looks like I am going to have to delete Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 from my computer. I am not being facetious either.

On principle I have stayed away from the Ipps and Houdini and now to stay principled I am not going to be able to continue using Rybka.

Makes me sad, but that is the way it is.

(it actually makes me a little angry as well since I paid for Rybka...I wonder if I can get my money back?)

I am not sure why you would do something like that. The potential problem is between the real author and the one that stole code. Neither one of them get anything out of your suggested actions.

It has nothing to do with what either author gets or doesn't get from my actions. It is about being consistent in my actions and thoughts. Period.

It's hard to build consistent thoughts about complex issues in the absence of facts and in such a short amount of time. Congratulations, I could not do that so quickly.

[M ANSARI]

Somehow I feel I understand the post differently than others. It seems like Fabien is "asking" about several allegations and wants to be up to date on what the allegations are ... nothing I read says anything about confirming anything. Hard to believe that Fabien has been oblivious about this controversy, but I guess computer chess is not as important to some as we would like to believe. Also this is also about Strelka, where the author said he patched up some of his code he couldn't decompile by copying Fruit code. I think we should give Fabien some time to see what the allegations are and then either confirm or deny the set of allegations that he saw. Of course his opinion means more than anyone's. I think too much is being made about Rybka 1.0 beta and since that was free, I don't see it as a big deal (although very wrong if a violation did occur). What would be important is to see if the Rybka's that were sold for profit have any violations ... so maybe the first commercial Rybka should be looked at and scrutinized rather than the free beta. There is a huge difference between a free closed source program that might have violated a GPL license, and a program that goes commercial by simply copying existing code and modifying some parts. Maybe someone could get Fabien up to speed and show him Zack's report and maybe BB's report on Ippolit, and some other stuff that has been shown as proof of violations. I would be very interested in what he has to say about that.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

First thing came to my thoughts after reading the article is a huge lie Vasik was spreading through all these years....that he,Vasik,contacted Fabien regarding the fruit-Rybka affair and Fabien is fine with it and even doesn't care which as I wrote turned out to be a huge lie....
Dr.D