A Question for Our Sponsor..IPPO Links OK or Not??

[Graham Banks]

The BB report is not universally accepted as far as I'm aware. Who is BB?

They're universally accepted... but then again there are always select few that disagree with the report. Finally we have this report as evidence and the report is enough to prove to many people and atleast 2 moderators that the engine is not in _any_ way questionable.

As for BB, I don't know who he is. I thought he was a good friend of Zach's and had communicated with Larry Kauffman. I have no doubt that he's genuine intelligent programmer.

Why won't any of these people put their names to what they claim?

[Terry McCracken]

The BB report is not universally accepted as far as I'm aware. Who is BB?

They're universally accepted... but then again there are always select few that disagree with the report. Finally we have this report as evidence and the report is enough to prove to many people and atleast 2 moderators that the engine is not in _any_ way questionable.

As for BB, I don't know who he is. I thought he was a good friend of Zach's and had communicated with Larry Kauffman. I have no doubt that he's genuine intelligent programmer.

Why won't any of these people put their names to what they claim?

Who Cares? Without proving it's plagerism you have nothing, even if you're right.

I know this, why don't you?

[gerold]

ICD/ Your Move & Chess and company didn't specifically ask links to (IPPOLIT/Robbolito) to be deleted. They DIDN'T name _any_ engine. They just asked that the links to questionable software to be deleted.

Posts from both yourself and Jeremy in the mods forum straight after this show clearly that you two also knew that they were talking specifically about these engines as you clearly stated so.
I will not quote from that forum because it's private, but at least when a new moderation team gets access to it, they'll be able to see everything in there.

Cheers,
Graham.

They're not questionable anymore (more strong evidence from BB reports)

I have asked Jeremy to read this thread and ask him to comment since he's on a holiday.

The BB report is not universally accepted as far as I'm aware. Who is BB?

They're universally accepted... but then again there are always select few that disagree with the report. Finally we have this report as evidence and the report is enough to prove to many people and atleast 2 moderators that the engine is not in _any_ way questionable.

As for BB, I don't know who he is. I thought he was a good friend of Zach's and had communicated with Larry Kauffman. I have no doubt that he's genuine intelligent programmer.

I do not except BB report.
Who is BB.
Universally accepted by who.
Get real.

Best,
Gerold.

[swami]

ICD/ Your Move & Chess and company didn't specifically ask links to (IPPOLIT/Robbolito) to be deleted. They DIDN'T name _any_ engine. They just asked that the links to questionable software to be deleted.

Posts from both yourself and Jeremy in the mods forum straight after this show clearly that you two also knew that they were talking specifically about these engines as you clearly stated so.
I will not quote from that forum because it's private, but at least when a new moderation team gets access to it, they'll be able to see everything in there.

Cheers,
Graham.

They're not questionable anymore (more strong evidence from BB reports)

I have asked Jeremy to read this thread and ask him to comment since he's on a holiday.

The BB report is not universally accepted as far as I'm aware. Who is BB?

They're universally accepted... but then again there are always select few that disagree with the report. Finally we have this report as evidence and the report is enough to prove to many people and atleast 2 moderators that the engine is not in _any_ way questionable.

As for BB, I don't know who he is. I thought he was a good friend of Zach's and had communicated with Larry Kauffman. I have no doubt that he's genuine intelligent programmer.

I do not except BB report.
Who is BB.
Universally accepted by who.
Get real.

Best,
Gerold.

Hi Gerold

BB's report (strong evidence) may not be accepted by gerold daniels

It's accepted by many programmers such as Zach Wegner, Dr.Robert Hyatt, Chris Whittington, Ed Schroder and number of people.......... enough to induce huge _confidence_ in 2 moderators that Ippolit engines are not in _any_ way illegal.

[gerold]

ICD/ Your Move & Chess and company didn't specifically ask links to (IPPOLIT/Robbolito) to be deleted. They DIDN'T name _any_ engine. They just asked that the links to questionable software to be deleted.

Posts from both yourself and Jeremy in the mods forum straight after this show clearly that you two also knew that they were talking specifically about these engines as you clearly stated so.
I will not quote from that forum because it's private, but at least when a new moderation team gets access to it, they'll be able to see everything in there.

Cheers,
Graham.

They're not questionable anymore (more strong evidence from BB reports)

I have asked Jeremy to read this thread and ask him to comment since he's on a holiday.

The BB report is not universally accepted as far as I'm aware. Who is BB?

They're universally accepted... but then again there are always select few that disagree with the report. Finally we have this report as evidence and the report is enough to prove to many people and atleast 2 moderators that the engine is not in _any_ way questionable.

As for BB, I don't know who he is. I thought he was a good friend of Zach's and had communicated with Larry Kauffman. I have no doubt that he's genuine intelligent programmer.

I do not except BB report.
Who is BB.
Universally accepted by who.
Get real.

Best,
Gerold.

Hi Gerold

BB's report (strong evidence) may not be accepted by gerold
daniels Still looking for the strong evidence LOL.

It's accepted by many programmers such as Zach Wegner, Dr.Robert Hyatt, Chris Whittington, Ed Schroder and number of people.......... enough to induce huge _confidence_ in 2 moderators that Ippolit engines are not in _any_ way illegal.

[swami]

gerold,

If _you_ think the Ippolit is questionable. Why do you still download and test the engine?

Here's your test: http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... ht=#353190

As for me, I don't think it's questionable.

If you haven't read the BB's report and want to read it. Please see this:
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34914

[Michael Diosi]

Hi,

It was nice talking to you... Nice try...No success...

Michael
http://www.playwitharena.com

[Sven]

gerold,

If _you_ think the Ippolit is questionable. Why do you still download and test the engine?

Here's your test: http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... ht=#353190

As for me, I don't think it's questionable.

If you haven't read the BB's report and want to read it. Please see this:
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34914

The whole thing is much more simple. We can accept the BB report, even though the author decides to stay anonymous. We may also assume that it is quite accurate. You can be sure that Vas has the same opinion. But a lot of people, including many non-programmers and also a few programmers, are simply either not understanding it or misinterpreting its contents. Those who do not understand it might have repeated what others say. It is easy to see a "majority" this way. But I still hope that there is a tiny set of people left who care more about what they see and what they know, instead of what a "majority" says.

The key point is that those people who understand the BB report know that IP* is definitely based to a huge extent on the results of disassembling Rybka 3, with a lot of *changes* that were made. The major part of the R3 reuse obviously occurs in evaluation and search while the origin of other parts like board representation, move generator or UCI interface (to name only a few) is not clearly identified.

As an example I suggest to look at appendix B of the BB report (page 28ff), and do a thorough comparison of the listed search algorithms. There are four algorithms given in detail:

- PV node
- Low-depth (not in check)
- qsearch when not in check
- qsearch when in check

For each of these, copy the IP* and the Rybka section into separate text files, do some careful indenting, formatting and "normalizing" to improve comparability of the two sides, and then use a good text comparison tool (I use BeyondCompare, there are some others).

Look how much is different, and how much is IDENTICAL.

Then come back, please.

You may go a similar way for the evaluation part, although there it is slightly harder since the BB report does not contain such detailled listings of eval algorithms like for search. But you can still see a lot of DIFFERENCES and a lot of IDENTICAL things.

It is clear that drawing the line between "taking ideas" and "taking code" is not easy, especially in a case like this where we are considering disassembling. In the given situation I would say that the IP* authors have taken a very huge amount of ideas from R3 at least, so much that it is very obvious where most of the playing strength of IP* (and therefore its descendants) comes from.

Now a lot of different terms are being used here.

"Legal"? Difficult to say. Disassembling to understand what a program does is not illegal by itself. Taking ideas to implement them in an own work is surely legal, too. To a certain extent, at least. But when the amount of ideas taken approaches the whole set of ideas that are found in the original program then I'd raise some doubts, although this is clearly a "grey area" which will be difficult to resolve. Knowing the exact R3 source code version would definitely help a lot here but is not available.

Even if our result were "it's illegal" then the proof of illegality is missing, and Vas will probably not open a court case therefore. He will write up the case, that is for sure, and it will very probably take less than two years until then. This will perhaps convince some more people. Not everyone, of course, which is clear since we don't have a case being as simple as "2 + 2 = 4".

"Moral/legitimate"? One of my main doubts about legality arises from the fact that the IP* source code was published as "public domain", which for me is a copyright violation. Same as above: not easy to prove without R3 source, and "grey area" as far as the "ideas vs. code" line is concerned. But everyone should understand at least that the act of publicly exposing the results of uncovering huge parts of the intellectual property of someone else, being the closed source of the strongest chess engine so far, cannot be called "moral", even if it were "legal".

And that still holds *independent* from the well-known Fruit-R1 case, since it is clear that even a proof of a GPL violation in R1, if it would exist, would *not* turn Rybka (with its current version R4 as the only version where Vas is now saving the source) into an open source program, as long as the copyright owner of Fruit does not make a case. There is *no* double standard here. Publicly exposing something based by a huge amount on closed source of the strongest program so far is a "Robin Hood" style action which should not be regarded as "legitimate" in the CC community in my opinion.

"Clone"? The term is not clearly defined. Many different attempts of a definition are around. I simply avoid it, for me it is enough to know where IP* comes from and has got most of its strength from, I don't need a special word for it.

"Derivative"? Yes. Not in the sense of the GPL, which does not apply here, but in the sense that IP* is clearly (heavily) derived from another engine. But same as "clone": I don't need that word here.

"Original work"? IP* surely contains some of it, but the big picture is that a huge part of IP* is not an original work.

"Questionable"? Of course. Authors of IP* are anonymous, using phantasy names only. That alone, together with their dubious appearance in the ip*.w* forum and their use of language, makes IP* questionable for me. Now many might say, why not being anonymous? The answer is simple: accepting engines with anonymous authors will destroy CC sooner or later, that is for sure. Considering additionally the origins of IP* and the "moral" aspect makes it even more questionable. If we take the word of the CCC charter then we'll find the term "questionable legal status". That is difficult. If some say it's legal and other say it's not, and there is no court to decide, then what *is* the legal status? Don't know. But it surely remains "questionable" when considering mainly the anonymity aspect.

"Do not test it"? Subject of personal opinion as well as of some "general agreement". Personally I would vote for not testing engines with anonymous authors at least, and I would advertise for taking this as a general agreement.

The "closed source program derived from public domain program which is derived from another closed source program" topic (Fire, Houdini, ...) is clearly another - interesting and challenging - issue which I can't cover here.

"Do not link to it"? After the horse has left the barn it's too late to close the door. (I hope I got that right in English, in German the saying goes: "Das Kind ist in den Brunnen gefallen.") We cannot do much (actually: nothing) about hiding the existence of the Ipp* engine family from the world. Links are everywhere. But there is no need for additional advertising. I suggest that everyone stops pointing fingers, saying "they don't allow IP* links => they are censoring" or "they allow IP* links => they are advertising it". We have a variety of different places where CC is discussed, and each has its own rules. None of these places can claim for itself to have the "right" rules while others are wrong. If people do not like the rules of one place they go to somewhere else. This has happened recently, will always happen, and is quite normal. But the "pointing fingers" is not (from both sides).

As a conclusion, I vote for being consistent regarding the handling of links to IP* sites within CCC by *not* allowing them, for being consistent also everywhere else regarding their rules, and to everyone for accepting these attempts to be consistent, as well as any failure of these which are always part of a learning process.


Please agree, and let's have peace

Sven

[swami]

Hi Sven, Thanks for the detailed response. All that matters to the ICD and company is that as long as the engine is not legally questionable, It's Ok.
So, by your analysis, the engine doesn't sound illegal.

I think it's Ok to take _any_ amount of ideas as long as it's not the exact copy paste. Surely, nearly every programmer has taken some ideas and implemented the stuff on their own.

I will leave the technical discussion to Bob and others since they probably know more about the inner working of the engine than I do.

"Legal"? Difficult to say. Disassembling to understand what a program does is not illegal by itself. Taking ideas to implement them in an own work is surely legal, too. To a certain extent, at least. But when the amount of ideas taken approaches the whole set of ideas that are found in the original program then I'd raise some doubts, although this is clearly a "grey area" which will be difficult to resolve. Knowing the exact R3 source code version would definitely help a lot here but is not available.

[Matthias Gemuh]

The key point is that those people who understand the BB report know that IP* is definitely based to a huge extent on the results of disassembling Rybka 3, with a lot of *changes* that were made. The major part of the R3 reuse obviously occurs in evaluation and search while the origin of other parts like board representation, move generator or UCI interface (to name only a few) is not clearly identified.

Sven

That alone is adequate proof that you don't understand the BB report.
The _types_ of differences exposed in the report make it near impossible to modify Rybka that much and still end up with a functioning engine.
It would be _much_ easier to write everything from scratch, exploiting concepts and code snippets from other engines (including Rybka).

If you can't understand that much, look for a different topic to discuss.

Matthias.