Houdini wrote:lkaufman wrote: Isn't this an EXACT description of the origin of IPPOLIT, except that it took longer than 3 months? If Richard does use info from Houdini RE in Critter (and I'm not saying that he does), it would be exactly the same as what the IPPOLIT author(s) did, from which Houdini started. I'm not saying I approve of this, but I think you are not in a position to complain about RE. If you want to be fairly safe from RE, don't start with someone else's open source code, write an original program.
You're the guy that has repeatedly pushed Richard to discuss the RE findings of Houdini for the sole purpose of improving your own engine. You are inciting Richard to commit illicit actions for your personal benefit.
You also seem very happy to justify your crime by pointing to an alleged crime committed by the unknown people that created IPPOLIT.
I have nothing to do with all this, and find your attitude simply disgusting.
As you seem to be so much in favor of RE, let me ask you the same question I asked Don higher in this thread.
Suppose someone RE's your next Komodo 6 and then:
- Discusses the results openly on this forum.
- Publishes the source code in a different language (say, Fortran or Pascal) so that it's an obviously non-competitive engine but still shows all the details of your evaluation and search.
- Integrates important search and evaluation elements in his own engine, and then distributes his engine source code to competitors.
- Provides help on the forums to other people that want to RE Komodo.
- Releases a free Komostrelka 1.1 that plays exactly like your commercial Komodo 6.
If you approve of all this, I will hire Jury Osipov to do the job.
Robert
Regarding RE an engine and then writing your own based loosely on what you learned, as IPPO did to Rybka and as you allege that Richard did to Houdini, I don't know if it is illegal or not, there seems to be a dispute about that. If it is illegal, it is pretty much unenforceable, unless the similarities are so strong as to remove any doubt of its origin. So it is my position that it is up to the original author to make it reasonably difficult for someone to do this, mainly by not using substantial code that is already open source. It's kind of like saying that if you leave hundred dollar bills out on your lawn overnight, don't be surprised if someone steals them. In other words, don't make it so easy.
Regarding discussing results, once someone does the RE and used the knowledge himself, making the ideas public can't be criticized. If you consider the first action a crime like theft, then it's as if the thief chose to share his loot with the world. If it's not a crime, then certainly no harm done by sharing.
Releasing actual code from RE or releasing a virtual clone of an engine is much more clearly wrong and illegal than just getting and/or sharing ideas from RE. So I don't approve of Robodini or Strelka, or Houdini if it was based on a non-public domain derivative of IPPO as opposed to the original IPPO as has been alleged here(I don't have any special knowledge of this point except what I read in this forum).
So yes, I would not be happy if someone did all of the above to Komodo 6, though some of them would not bother me much. If someone does this to Houdini because they feel that Houdini forfeits the right to protection because it copied protected code, that is a reasonable position morally (I don't know about legally, I'm not a lawyer). In that case it comes down to whether Houdini did or did not use protected code.
We don't worry about this problem for Komodo because it is totally original, so it would be a lot of work for someone to RE it fully. Maybe when we are clearly superior to Houdini someone will do it, but not until then, I suppose. If you don't want people doing this to Houdini, it is in your power to make it extremely difficult. Rewrite the code from scratch, duplicating the function, as it is alleged that Richard Vida did with Critter more or less. If he could do it, you should be able to as well if you are as good as he is. That would also make your new engine immune from any potential lawsuit by Norm etc for using protected code.
Finally I would add that we have received very little benefit (maybe five elo or so in total) from purported Houdini ideas exposed in this forum. It seems that most of them only work in Ippo-derived engines. I am quite curious about how Houdini 3 gained 60 elo over Houdini 2, but I doubt that the answer would be very relevant to Komodo. Maybe part of it came from Komodo ideas someone found by RE, I wouldn't know unless someone reveals the entire list of changes from H2 to H3.
