Norm Schmidt .....and the computer chess

[Christopher Conkie]

Hi,



Very funny. Can he detect a clone ?

Michael
http://www.playwitharena.com

Even funnier is that I am in there just because we would not tell anyone who made those engines.

They are not even clones as they were all made by the original authors who wrote the code

Bob Hyatt is a cloner as well it seems.

I guess we will have to get him shut down.

He obviously has a death wish......



Christopher

[Michael Diosi]

Hi,

Sucka, Massaka, Tossa listed there are NOT Fruit clones and they were not done by Chris. They are original engines done by their genuine programmers. This guy is not able to detect anything. He has just coppied the info from the Arena and other pages.

I can assure you the genuine authors can tell you this. They are all members here and are fighting clones/cloners.

Michael

http://www.playwitharena.com

[bob]

Hi,
No one on mother Earth can deny the great job you are doing with Christopher catching the cloners and saving our testing time and hardware resources....
Dr.D

Excuse me if I disagree. It's just the computerchess community to begin with and then this community, at least here on CCC, is a bit undecided.
In some cases it creates a lot of suspicion against alleged fakes but then that same community is trying to whitewash certain persons. And then it's a disturbing coincidence when a proven several times sinner was among those hunters who wanted to chase certain fake(r)s. The private hunter principle brings a factor into our community that is not sane, as if it were news that certain experts could reveil any sort of fakes if necessary. That alone should be enough to prevent the most fakes. But to praise a private group that is constantly chasing after fakes in a style of police is therefore problematic because the community as such has never installed or authorized such a police institution. And - above all - that institution insinuates a sort of cleaness which isnt existing at all.

Two aspects:

- Practically all free programs and probably the commercial ones
too are based to 60 - 90 % on prior programs (enter your own %)

- The few commercial programs were never examined in detail


So, as a consequence I propose that procedure:

It is declared by the CC federation/community that cloning is forbidden and if discovered the cloner is no longer a participant in tests or plays.

It is declared that since commercial programs cant be examined, a certain individual cloning cant have influence on the status of a programmer.

Since commercials cant be examined any permanent bureau of investigation should be closed because it it's just a pain for motivated beginners or traditional delinquents, while the commercial guys bath themselves in the light of unchallengable good names.

A council of true experts (like Bob Hyatt plus NNs) can always be activated in case of serious doubts related to championships or such some.

Again IMO it's inacceptable to tolerate a private hunter group, as motivated as it might be, because this private group is acting under no control and it has no power in front of commercial programs. It disciplines the little amateurs and avoids to research the financially potent commercial entities. This is unfair, undemocratic and suppressing potential talents. Because all talents once in a while start and work with copies. And 90 % of the whole scene is mutual borrowed material.

I want to close this little memorandum with the following provocation:

If in case a talented programmer newbie would borrow 99% of the known stuff and with his 1% of new ideas or technical tricks he would get a program that is 10 or 20% stronger than all others, then the details of these 99% should have no attention by anyone since it cant logically be in no thinkable case that such an entity should be a clone if it's so much stronger than all others. So, believe it or not, in truth it's the strength that decides if it's regarded as a clone. The strongest thing on Earth cant be a clone by definition because then the cloned thing would be similarily strong.

With that simple rule or logic we could end all RYBKA debates now and foever. Period.

Your last two paragraphs are a crock. It is ok to copy 99% of a program, and modify 1%, and if that makes it _much_ stronger then plagiarism laws are suspended? For a 30,000 line chess program, one needs to add 300 lines and then they can declare this program to be their own? Can we apply the same standard to books? My absolute favorite author is Matthew Reilly. Can I take one of his books, such as "Area 7" and then change say 300 words assuming his book has 30,000 words, and then call that my own work? This is nonsense.

If you copy a program, and claim the result as your own work, you are guilty of plagiarism. Plain and simple.

[bob]

Hi,



Very funny. Can he detect a clone ?

Michael
http://www.playwitharena.com

Even funnier is that I am in there just because we would not tell anyone who made those engines.

They are not even clones as they were all made by the original authors who wrote the code

Bob Hyatt is a cloner as well it seems.

I guess we will have to get him shut down.

He obviously has a death wish......



Christopher

Who is the moron that wrote that page? How can one "clone" a hardware program (deep blue) and rewrite it as C (Crafty)? Particularly when the "source" (the hardware physical description used as input to the "silicon compiler" that did the chip layout) has never been published???

That is really pretty funny stuff...

[Rolf]

Your last two paragraphs are a crock. It is ok to copy 99% of a program, and modify 1%, and if that makes it _much_ stronger then plagiarism laws are suspended? For a 30,000 line chess program, one needs to add 300 lines and then they can declare this program to be their own? Can we apply the same standard to books? My absolute favorite author is Matthew Reilly. Can I take one of his books, such as "Area 7" and then change say 300 words assuming his book has 30,000 words, and then call that my own work? This is nonsense.

If you copy a program, and claim the result as your own work, you are guilty of plagiarism. Plain and simple.

Excuse me, Bob, I didnt say that for the case if someone only added 1% in length, I said, that if someone could get a program 20% better than the original (with copied 99%) THEN IMO that guy has attained a class of its own with his (theoretical) 1% addition. It was more a _question_ by me as you know, so I ask again, is such a thing theoretically do-able? Or is it impossible from the design of such a multi-lines-code. But guess it were possible, would it then be forbidden to do, if the "new" thing is 20% better, the more so if it is better than the existing top leader?

Couldnt you please state such a thing as follows, that e.g. TOGA is a clone of FRUIT and with 20% new additions so that it's accepted and tested, or is TOGA something else. Could you tell this for the more uninformed lays? Also, why TOGA isnt as strong as RYBKA? Thanks so much. But without such infos the lay cant understand why TOGA isnt participating at Championships. Rolf

[Dann Corbit]

Your last two paragraphs are a crock. It is ok to copy 99% of a program, and modify 1%, and if that makes it _much_ stronger then plagiarism laws are suspended? For a 30,000 line chess program, one needs to add 300 lines and then they can declare this program to be their own? Can we apply the same standard to books? My absolute favorite author is Matthew Reilly. Can I take one of his books, such as "Area 7" and then change say 300 words assuming his book has 30,000 words, and then call that my own work? This is nonsense.

If you copy a program, and claim the result as your own work, you are guilty of plagiarism. Plain and simple.

Excuse me, Bob, I didnt say that for the case if someone only added 1% in length, I said, that if someone could get a program 20% better than the original (with copied 99%) THEN IMO that guy has attained a class of its own with his (theoretical) 1% addition. It was more a _question_ by me as you know, so I ask again, is such a thing theoretically do-able? Or is it impossible from the design of such a multi-lines-code. But guess it were possible, would it then be forbidden to do, if the "new" thing is 20% better, the more so if it is better than the existing top leader?

Couldnt you please state such a thing as follows, that e.g. TOGA is a clone of FRUIT and with 20% new additions so that it's accepted and tested, or is TOGA something else. Could you tell this for the more uninformed lays? Also, why TOGA isnt as strong as RYBKA? Thanks so much. But without such infos the lay cant understand why TOGA isnt participating at Championships. Rolf

There are programs designed to be used as a programming base. They are intended to be cloned. In such a situation, as long as proper credit is given, it is not wrong to make these clones. For instance, Fruit has spawned an army of clones such as the Toga crew. Now, as to whether these clone programs can compete in tournaments or be analyzed by rating systems is another matter. If (for instance) I run a contest and decide that only one engine from a particular base (e.g. Fruit) can compete, then that would be up to me as the tournament organizer.

As to wheter it is good or bad to take a strong engine and fiddle with it is another matter which I am not fit to decide.

Personally, I like to read the source code of any engine I can get my hands on. Sometimes, they are hard for me to understand and sometimes easy. At any rate, I want to learn the ideas of the authors because they are interesting to me. In a similar way, I like to read all the chess papers I can get my hands on. Some are hard to understand and some are easy to understand. The general idea of search is a very interesting place of study for me. Because I work in the database field, search is something I ponder over all the time.

If someone makes slanderous statements (e.g. "Crafty is a clone" is pure slander) I think we should feel utter contempt towards them.

The notion of cloning something is not inherently bad. But the end product is different than a tool that was written without a single line from another program.

I also believe that reading technical papers and transplanting those ideas into chess programs is another kind of cloning. After all, we are moving good ideas that someone else made into something we want to call our own.

Is someone who creates and posts a strong open source chess program doing something wrong? Is someone who writes a paper that explains how to make a chess program stronger doing something wrong?

In both cases, I would say 'No.' but others may disagree. Personally, I think that knowlege should be public and not hidden whenever possible and also that the competition in chess programming has gone a little bit too far because many people want to hide their ideas instead of publishing them. Once again, I need to qualify that. It is *not* wrong to hide your ideas. But it is better if you do not hide them.

IMO-YMMV

[Bill Rogers]

Hi fellas
I was always under the impressiion that the software laws in this country stated that it took a complete 10% change in the software to declare it a new program. That would mean if a piece of software contained 30,000 lines of code to be able to claim a new program with sould take 3,000 new lines of code added to the original.
I worked for a software house for 15 years and although it had nothing to do with chess they operated under those rules as they claimed to know the Federal regulations for such things.
If I am wrong or there has been some changes in the Federal Rules then maybe someone can point me to the offical location where they are disputed.
Bill

[Le Fou numerique]

Hi,

Norman Schmidt is Belgium citizen, he lives and clones, sorry works, in Belgium.

So the law of Belgium and also EU.

The law in Belgium can be read here.

Regards,
Patrick

[bob]

Your last two paragraphs are a crock. It is ok to copy 99% of a program, and modify 1%, and if that makes it _much_ stronger then plagiarism laws are suspended? For a 30,000 line chess program, one needs to add 300 lines and then they can declare this program to be their own? Can we apply the same standard to books? My absolute favorite author is Matthew Reilly. Can I take one of his books, such as "Area 7" and then change say 300 words assuming his book has 30,000 words, and then call that my own work? This is nonsense.

If you copy a program, and claim the result as your own work, you are guilty of plagiarism. Plain and simple.

Excuse me, Bob, I didnt say that for the case if someone only added 1% in length, I said, that if someone could get a program 20% better than the original (with copied 99%) THEN IMO that guy has attained a class of its own with his (theoretical) 1% addition. It was more a _question_ by me as you know, so I ask again, is such a thing theoretically do-able? Or is it impossible from the design of such a multi-lines-code. But guess it were possible, would it then be forbidden to do, if the "new" thing is 20% better, the more so if it is better than the existing top leader?

Couldnt you please state such a thing as follows, that e.g. TOGA is a clone of FRUIT and with 20% new additions so that it's accepted and tested, or is TOGA something else. Could you tell this for the more uninformed lays? Also, why TOGA isnt as strong as RYBKA? Thanks so much. But without such infos the lay cant understand why TOGA isnt participating at Championships. Rolf

Your math escapes me. If they copied 99%, then they only changed/added 1%. We do have to deal with the conservation of numbers here where 99% + x = 100% means X must be 1%.

Toga is a clone of fruit, plain and simple, No one argues that fact that I am aware of. Toga can't participate because ICGA rules do not allow derivative works. One could probably enter Toga, with Fabien listed as an author, if Fruit does not play. But both could not play. Ditto for Glaurung 2 and Stockfish, or any of the other such derivatives.

As far as "is it doable" to get a significant increase in Elo with just a few changes, the answer is yes. Null move search is maybe 10 lines of code, with a +80 Elo improvement. LMR is maybe 10-20 lines of code depending on how it is implemented, with a +80 improvement if you don't use null move, maybe 40 if you do (actual numbers have been posted in the past after I tested, I don't remember them exactly). It is quite easy to imagine yet another such idea being discovered, say going from Fruit to Rybka 1. If you look at stockfish, in my testing it is +120 better than the most recent Glaurung I have. The changes do not appear to be massive.

[bob]

Hi fellas
I was always under the impressiion that the software laws in this country stated that it took a complete 10% change in the software to declare it a new program. That would mean if a piece of software contained 30,000 lines of code to be able to claim a new program with sould take 3,000 new lines of code added to the original.
I worked for a software house for 15 years and although it had nothing to do with chess they operated under those rules as they claimed to know the Federal regulations for such things.
If I am wrong or there has been some changes in the Federal Rules then maybe someone can point me to the offical location where they are disputed.
Bill

According to the GPL, if you keep _one_ original line from a copied source, this is not considered original and is a violation of the GPL unless the modified program is also released under the GPL.