Robodini Q&A

[michiguel]

So Richard as an EU citizen already broke EU law publicing Robodini.

Of course.
Likewise for all the information Richard previously released on this and other forums about the RE of Houdini 1.5.
Likewise for all Critter versions that have appeared after Richard's and Jury Osipov's RE of Houdini 1.5, including OpenCritter 1.1.37, of which can rather easily be demonstrated that it contains numerous elements of Houdini 1.5 that could only have been obtained by RE.

Furthermore it is mind-boggling that the discussion of the RE results of Houdini (or of any other engine, for that matter) is not only allowed on this forum, but often even encouraged and applauded.

For the record, this is FALSE. These conducts are not encouraged in this forum, and every time there was a complain, we listened, and if needed, we acted.

/Mod Team

See the adjacent thread where, once again, several people including Larry Kaufman push Richard to discuss openly the findings of the RE of Houdini 3.

If ever it comes to it, this forum will be a goldmine for providing proof of misbehavior. A bon entendeur, salut!

Robert

[jd1]

The houdini issue has been shown with 100% clarity on open-chess. Direct comparison of houdini ASM vs Robolito ASM. Zero doubt.

Thanks, I don't visit that forum.

But that is not a comparison of original source code. I'm pedantic I know in only accepting original source code comparisons as the truth, but that is my right. If other people are happy with ASM, good for them.

Robbolito source code was part of that OpenChess article, too.

Sven

I'll take your word for it without looking, but I bet there is no original Houdini source code compared to it side by side..

Edit: but all said and done, I just don't care about this. If Robert did use Robbo as a stating point, good on him. It is often smart not to re-invent the wheel. Of course some authors gain no satisfaction from studying or using other code, and do want to to everything from scratch. All credit to them also.

Ray, I agree with you on some of that, but firstly, no cloner shows their source code, and thus we cannot compare the original source. With your requirements, no engine could ever be "proved" a clone/derivative. In fact I could produce a new clone of Ivanhoe in 5 minutes and claim it as my own - since you can't see the original source code, is it not a clone?

How sure are you that Houdini did not start from Robbolito? If you are not sure, as you indicate, please do not argue that way. Furthermore, you said you did not care - but do you not think we should encourage honesty? RH deserves credit but he should be honest about the origins of his engine.

Jerry

[geots]

The re-engineering I don't see as illegal also by Ed's quote. So I don't agree. The Digital Rights to this program could still be contested, by the Rybka programmer for instance or the Robbolito programmer(s) if he/they ever comes forward. So I don't think what I said is bad information. Robodini is not sold so I don't think it is a competing product as seems the meaning here in Ed's quote. Commercial programs that use code obtained through RE and made by Robert Houdart, would be clearly illegal, but if they just use information that they did not re engineer themselves, this is not enforceable. The program it self is not necessarily useful information, if it exactly has the same output as Houdini, but indirectly yes, you could see this as information about Houdini's program. And I clearly had a reserve against any other information that could be leaked from the RE or the discussions in public.

Regards, Eelco

1. The post of Ed clearly say that you cannot public the result of RE and even more that you can RE only under certain circumstances (that are not clearly for personal benefit as it is said openly btw).

2. Houdini even if having 100% proof of being base on Robbo still contains much code that it's legally proprietary of Houdart, and on those code you can put every license you want and that code cannot be RE. Since the code is obviously mixed if you RE the whole you RE also that code, hence an illegal action as of point 1.

3. DRM is not tied to the type of content. If you put a restriction to the use then that restriction must be adhered to. If you don't adhere to it you commit an illegal action and even more you do so if you allow others to not adhere to the same.

I have told a lot of people to pick your battles carefully- try to stay with the ones you can win, whereas Robert Houdart is concerned. Exactly all I have read here that he said makes perfect sense- it is logical. Even people who I consider my friends look about as foolish trying to refute what he says as their programs would trying to beat Houdini. I'm no expert, but as Dylan said "I don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." Richard screwed up big time- and the ones calling for him to show his results here of RE another man's commercial program should be banned. NO "ifs, ands or buts." It is time for this foolish train wreck of a discussion to end.



george

[Don]

I don't approve of it at all as you probably well know.

I'm glad you don't.
Not a single point in the list is fictitious, as you probably understood.

Robert

Robert,

Here is what is REALLY annoying to me. Richard Vida is not doing us any favors by publishing your ideas.

I have learned that knowledge obtained via reverse engineering cannot be shared legally and cannot be used in your own products.

What is so bizarre about this is that if I am unfortunate enough to hear how you do something, I am not free to discover the same concept myself because it is already in my head. Now if I come up with the SAME idea on my own, I can of course use it because your ideas are not patented.

So every time Richard publishes something about Houdini and I read about it, you are protected from me and anyone else who reads about it from the legal standpoint.

That also means that anyone who has leaned anything from the Robbolito sources (and those ideas almost certainly came from an RE of Rybka) is a criminal. That means you and I are criminals.

I think you can see why nobody is respecting these laws because they are essential insane and almost impossible to enforce.

Anyway, I DON'T WANT to know what is in your program or anyone else's for that matter unless it is open source.

[geots]

The houdini issue has been shown with 100% clarity on open-chess. Direct comparison of houdini ASM vs Robolito ASM. Zero doubt.

Thanks, I don't visit that forum.

But that is not a comparison of original source code. I'm pedantic I know in only accepting original source code comparisons as the truth, but that is my right. If other people are happy with ASM, good for them.

Robbolito source code was part of that OpenChess article, too.

Sven

I'll take your word for it without looking, but I bet there is no original Houdini source code compared to it side by side..

Edit: but all said and done, I just don't care about this. If Robert did use Robbo as a stating point, good on him. It is often smart not to re-invent the wheel. Of course some authors gain no satisfaction from studying or using other code, and do want to to everything from scratch. All credit to them also.

Ray, I agree with you on some of that, but firstly, no cloner shows their source code, and thus we cannot compare the original source. With your requirements, no engine could ever be "proved" a clone/derivative. In fact I could produce a new clone of Ivanhoe in 5 minutes and claim it as my own - since you can't see the original source code, is it not a clone?

How sure are you that Houdini did not start from Robbolito? If you are not sure, as you indicate, please do not argue that way. Furthermore, you said you did not care - but do you not think we should encourage honesty? RH deserves credit but he should be honest about the origins of his engine.

Jerry

Jerry, you are way too smart to be saying this. You then put Robert in a "lose-lose" situation. He can't win. He is being goaded into showing the code of his commercial engine to others. Go ahead- produce a clone of Ivanhoe in 5 minutes. But remember- it has to be a clone that can win 9 of every 10 games against the Ivanhoe it came from. Short of that- you haven't proved or accomplished zero.


gts

[JuLieN]

I don't approve of it at all as you probably well know.

I'm glad you don't.
Not a single point in the list is fictitious, as you probably understood.

Robert

Robert,

Here is what is REALLY annoying to me. Richard Vida is not doing us any favors by publishing your ideas.

I have learned that knowledge obtained via reverse engineering cannot be shared legally and cannot be used in your own products.

What is so bizarre about this is that if I am unfortunate enough to hear how you do something, I am not free to discover the same concept myself because it is already in my head. Now if I come up with the SAME idea on my own, I can of course use it because your ideas are not patented.

So every time Richard publishes something about Houdini and I read about it, you are protected from me and anyone else who reads about it from the legal standpoint.

That also means that anyone who has leaned anything from the Robbolito sources (and those ideas almost certainly came from an RE of Rybka) is a criminal. That means you and I are criminals.

I think you can see why nobody is respecting these laws because they are essential insane and almost impossible to enforce.

Anyway, I DON'T WANT to know what is in your program or anyone else's for that matter unless it is open source.

I think you wrote this before you got my answer to your email, Don. And this was a misconception of yours. Probably because I wasn't precise enough. So here's the answer I mailed you:

No, it's not correct. Hearing from the idea, even as a competitor, isn't illegal, if you're "de bonne foi".... errr... I'll see how to translate that... Ok the online help isn't so helpful: it says "honest". . And honest you can't be if you asked the reverse-engineerer to communicate those ideas to you. But if you were honest, you can add them to your own program. The person anyway who REed and communicated those ideas is guilty and could be sued.

So if there is something really new in Houdini, and that the reverse-engineerer discloses it in the open, then this will be illegal. But the program's author would have to prove in court that this idea was never published anywhere before and so was really new.

[Don]

I don't approve of it at all as you probably well know.

I'm glad you don't.
Not a single point in the list is fictitious, as you probably understood.

Robert

Robert,

Here is what is REALLY annoying to me. Richard Vida is not doing us any favors by publishing your ideas.

I have learned that knowledge obtained via reverse engineering cannot be shared legally and cannot be used in your own products.

What is so bizarre about this is that if I am unfortunate enough to hear how you do something, I am not free to discover the same concept myself because it is already in my head. Now if I come up with the SAME idea on my own, I can of course use it because your ideas are not patented.

So every time Richard publishes something about Houdini and I read about it, you are protected from me and anyone else who reads about it from the legal standpoint.

That also means that anyone who has leaned anything from the Robbolito sources (and those ideas almost certainly came from an RE of Rybka) is a criminal. That means you and I are criminals.

I think you can see why nobody is respecting these laws because they are essential insane and almost impossible to enforce.

Anyway, I DON'T WANT to know what is in your program or anyone else's for that matter unless it is open source.

I think you wrote this before you got my answer to your email, Don. And this was a misconception of yours. Probably because I wasn't precise enough. So here's the answer I mailed you:

No, it's not correct. Hearing from the idea, even as a competitor, isn't illegal, if you're "de bonne foi".... errr... I'll see how to translate that... Ok the online help isn't so helpful: it says "honest". . And honest you can't be if you asked the reverse-engineerer to communicate those ideas to you. But if you were honest, you can add them to your own program. The person anyway who REed and communicated those ideas is guilty and could be sued.

So if there is something really new in Houdini, and that the reverse-engineerer discloses it in the open, then this will be illegal. But the program's author would have to prove in court that this idea was never published anywhere before and so was really new.

So if you did not solicit the idea and someone like Richard publishes it, then you are in good conscience free to use it, right? But if I pump Richard for this information then I would be guilty. In other words, once the cat is out of the bag and it becomes common knowledge, there is not much the original creator of the idea can do except go after the one who revealed it and/or anyone else involved actively in the quest. Did I get that right?

But what if I have a truly revolutionary idea that will add 100 ELO to any program and for example Richard or someone reverse engineers the idea and then publishes it on a web site or forum and it becomes common knowledge. Your last paragraph implies that this is the same as a patent, than nobody can use (even if they independently come up with the idea on their own) because the author can "prove" it was not published prior. So I don't see how anything I said was wrong.

[JuLieN]

So if you did not solicit the idea and someone like Richard publishes it, then you are in good conscience free to use it, right? But if I pump Richard for this information then I would be guilty. In other words, once the cat is out of the bag and it becomes common knowledge, there is not much the original creator of the idea can do except go after the one who revealed it and/or anyone else involved actively in the quest. Did I get that right?

Yes, you got it right.

But what if I have a truly revolutionary idea that will add 100 ELO to any program and for example Richard or someone reverse engineers the idea and then publishes it on a web site or forum and it becomes common knowledge. Your last paragraph implies that this is the same as a patent, than nobody can use (even if they independently come up with the idea on their own) because the author can "prove" it was not published prior. So I don't see how anything I said was wrong.

Here, we were talking of an idea never expressed before and then published in the open after reverse-engineering: the person doing that is guilty. If, yourself, you got the same idea independently and had it in your program already, there is nothing that can be reproached to you (you could produce your sources in court to prove you had this idea for a while, if you were challenged to do so.)*

For patents it is different: if two inventors get the same invention independently, only the one who will patent it first (and providing that this invention has never been disclosed anywhere before) will get a patent for it... If you try to patent the same invention, fruit of your work, the day after, you won't get granted a patent... and will have to get a license from the other inventor. Dura lex sed lex.


*Note anyway that copyright don't protect ideas (ideas aren't protected, not by the copyright, nor by patents, only their realization, embodiment, is), but the source code. So the prohibition of disclosing ideas from reverse-engineering doesn't come from intellectual-property but more from criminal law and business law notions. (I'm just telling this for the sake of being exact.) Reverse engineering of program is only allowed in two cases:
- it is allowed to the USER (not the competitor), for the sake of understanding the program (and only if this is not documented). And of course, disclosing his findings is forbidden.
- to the competitor for interoperability. A typical example is Open-Office foundation Reverse-engineering Word's file format, for inter-operability. Same thing for communication interfaces.

So the reverse-engineerer disclosing such ideas wouldn't be guilty on the ground of intellectual property but on the ground of criminal law and business law.

[Houdini]

Robert,

Here is what is REALLY annoying to me. Richard Vida is not doing us any favors by publishing your ideas.

Exactly. I genuinely believe that you don't want this and don't need this to make Komodo competitive.
But note that your co-author Larry has repeatedly been doing the exact opposite of what you say, by pushing Richard and other people to reveal RE information about Houdini, and this inevitably reflects on your efforts as well.

That also means that anyone who has leaned anything from the Robbolito sources (and those ideas almost certainly came from an RE of Rybka) is a criminal. That means you and I are criminals.

Not at all. There is a substantial difference between using sources that have fallen into the public domain and can no longer be considered private (as is the case with the IPPOLIT stuff), and actively pursuing the RE of a commercial engine 3 months after its release, most likely followed by the release of a free engine that inevitably will make use of the info that was obtained.

I think you can see why nobody is respecting these laws because they are essential insane and almost impossible to enforce.

When I presented you a concrete list of everything that's happened to Houdini in the past 20 months, you immediately recognized that you "don't approve of it at all". Maybe the law is not so insane after all.

Robert

[Don]

So if you did not solicit the idea and someone like Richard publishes it, then you are in good conscience free to use it, right? But if I pump Richard for this information then I would be guilty. In other words, once the cat is out of the bag and it becomes common knowledge, there is not much the original creator of the idea can do except go after the one who revealed it and/or anyone else involved actively in the quest. Did I get that right?

Yes, you got it right.

But what if I have a truly revolutionary idea that will add 100 ELO to any program and for example Richard or someone reverse engineers the idea and then publishes it on a web site or forum and it becomes common knowledge. Your last paragraph implies that this is the same as a patent, than nobody can use (even if they independently come up with the idea on their own) because the author can "prove" it was not published prior. So I don't see how anything I said was wrong.

Here, we were talking of an idea never expressed before and then published in the open after reverse-engineering: the person doing that is guilty. If, yourself, you got the same idea independently and had it in your program already, there is nothing that can be reproached to you (you could produce your sources in court to prove you had this idea for a while, if you were challenged to do so.)*

For patents it is different: if two inventors get the same invention independently, only the one who will patent it first (and providing that this invention has never been disclosed anywhere before) will get a patent for it... If you try to patent the same invention, fruit of your work, the day after, you won't get granted a patent... and will have to get a license from the other inventor. Dura lex sed lex.


*Note anyway that copyright don't protect ideas (ideas aren't protected, not by the copyright, nor by patents, only their realization, embodiment, is), but the source code.

That is a technicality however with patents. Usually the idea IS the realization so for all practical purposes the idea is protected, at least in many cases. For example if there is only one feasible way to do something and you figure it out then your idea is HOW to realize the process and so you patent it. You can say that only the "realization" of the idea is protected and that nobody is actually forbidden from having the same idea and that might be technically correct, but you are not allowed to do anything with that. Imagine that you had knowledge of how to save someones life but was forbidden to actually use that knowledge. Saying that you were not forbidden to have the knowledge would not be very comforting to the ones losing their dead loved one because you couldn't use your knowledge.

So the prohibition of disclosing ideas from reverse-engineering doesn't come from intellectual-property but more from criminal law and business law notions. (I'm just telling this for the sake of being exact.) Reverse engineering of program is only allowed in two cases:
- it is allowed to the USER (not the competitor), for the sake of understanding the program (and only if this is not documented). And of course, disclosing his findings is forbidden.
- to the competitor for interoperability. A typical example is Open-Office foundation Reverse-engineering Word's file format, for inter-operability. Same thing for communication interfaces.

So the reverse-engineerer disclosing such ideas wouldn't be guilty on the ground of intellectual property but on the ground of criminal law and business law.

Thanks Julian. It's nice to have someone with real legal expertise on the forum!

Don