In as few words as possible

[Michael Sherwin]

We are going in circles here. If I never saw another chess program other than Fruit and I wanted to write a chess program, so I used Fruit as a guide then my program is derived from Fruit. If anyone asked me, 'where did you derive the knowledge from to write your own program', then I would have to answear that I derived it from Fruit. Therefore Rybka is a derivitive of Fruit. However, the GPL does not apply, because, there is nothing original in Fruit and I can quote the author himself as saying that there is nothing original.

So, in the case of Fruit at least the GPL may not be valid under the law.

If this were true, then anyone who had read the source of Fruit (or any other GPL program) and writes a program that uses something he has learned is writing a GPL program. And if that is true, then GPL is viral in a horrible way beyond any imagining.

It is like saying, "If you have read my book and later write your book on the same subject, then your book also belongs to me."

Yes, that is what it implies! But, only pertaining to original never before known content.

alpha-beta, null move, history huristic, hash tables, common move ordering, PVS, IID, futility, etc. None of these things are licenseable as they are not original, but rather derived from someone elses work that has been freely submitted to the public.

[Alessandro Scotti]

So the type of derivation matters! But, then again the law is always open to reinterpretation! At the next court case the definition of derivation as applies to the GPL can change!

That is certainly possible. In my mind law is:
x) written law +
y) court/judge interpretation +
z) a random factor.

Still if you shot someone and your best justification is "I was cleaning the gun and..." I don't think you can expect much even by reinterpretations and/or random factors. Unless you're rich enough, of course.

[Michael Sherwin]

[Dann Corbit]

We are going in circles here. If I never saw another chess program other than Fruit and I wanted to write a chess program, so I used Fruit as a guide then my program is derived from Fruit. If anyone asked me, 'where did you derive the knowledge from to write your own program', then I would have to answear that I derived it from Fruit. Therefore Rybka is a derivitive of Fruit. However, the GPL does not apply, because, there is nothing original in Fruit and I can quote the author himself as saying that there is nothing original.

So, in the case of Fruit at least the GPL may not be valid under the law.

If this were true, then anyone who had read the source of Fruit (or any other GPL program) and writes a program that uses something he has learned is writing a GPL program. And if that is true, then GPL is viral in a horrible way beyond any imagining.

It is like saying, "If you have read my book and later write your book on the same subject, then your book also belongs to me."

Yes, that is what it implies! But, only pertaining to original never before known content.

alpha-beta, null move, history huristic, hash tables, common move ordering, PVS, IID, futility, etc. None of these things are licenseable as they are not original, but rather derived from someone elses work that has been freely submitted to the public.

However, this does not imply that you do not own copyright to your program derived from known ideas. In the same way, a poem or song is written using known words, patterns, etc. However it belongs to the author in its implementation.

But having written a song about a bluebird's beautiful color, I do not own the rights to all songs about the color of a bluebird even though the content will be approximately the same

[Alessandro Scotti]

It is like saying, "If you have read my book and later write your book on the same subject, then your book also belongs to me."

This will have to be decided on a per-book basis and IIRC has been tried in court several times. Apparently, it's worth a shot when there's enough money to be gained.

One famous case I remember:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainmen ... 382824.stm

[Michael Sherwin]

We are going in circles here. If I never saw another chess program other than Fruit and I wanted to write a chess program, so I used Fruit as a guide then my program is derived from Fruit. If anyone asked me, 'where did you derive the knowledge from to write your own program', then I would have to answear that I derived it from Fruit. Therefore Rybka is a derivitive of Fruit. However, the GPL does not apply, because, there is nothing original in Fruit and I can quote the author himself as saying that there is nothing original.

So, in the case of Fruit at least the GPL may not be valid under the law.

If this were true, then anyone who had read the source of Fruit (or any other GPL program) and writes a program that uses something he has learned is writing a GPL program. And if that is true, then GPL is viral in a horrible way beyond any imagining.

It is like saying, "If you have read my book and later write your book on the same subject, then your book also belongs to me."

Yes, that is what it implies! But, only pertaining to original never before known content.

alpha-beta, null move, history huristic, hash tables, common move ordering, PVS, IID, futility, etc. None of these things are licenseable as they are not original, but rather derived from someone elses work that has been freely submitted to the public.

However, this does not imply that you do not own copyright to your program derived from known ideas. In the same way, a poem or song is written using known words, patterns, etc. However it belongs to the author in its implementation.

But having written a song about a bluebird's beautiful color, I do not own the rights to all songs about the color of a bluebird even though the content will be approximately the same

That is why I made the claim that Fruit is protected under copyright law, but not under any contract aspect of the GPL.

[Dann Corbit]

We are going in circles here. If I never saw another chess program other than Fruit and I wanted to write a chess program, so I used Fruit as a guide then my program is derived from Fruit. If anyone asked me, 'where did you derive the knowledge from to write your own program', then I would have to answear that I derived it from Fruit. Therefore Rybka is a derivitive of Fruit. However, the GPL does not apply, because, there is nothing original in Fruit and I can quote the author himself as saying that there is nothing original.

So, in the case of Fruit at least the GPL may not be valid under the law.

If this were true, then anyone who had read the source of Fruit (or any other GPL program) and writes a program that uses something he has learned is writing a GPL program. And if that is true, then GPL is viral in a horrible way beyond any imagining.

It is like saying, "If you have read my book and later write your book on the same subject, then your book also belongs to me."

Yes, that is what it implies! But, only pertaining to original never before known content.

alpha-beta, null move, history huristic, hash tables, common move ordering, PVS, IID, futility, etc. None of these things are licenseable as they are not original, but rather derived from someone elses work that has been freely submitted to the public.

However, this does not imply that you do not own copyright to your program derived from known ideas. In the same way, a poem or song is written using known words, patterns, etc. However it belongs to the author in its implementation.

But having written a song about a bluebird's beautiful color, I do not own the rights to all songs about the color of a bluebird even though the content will be approximately the same

That is why I made the claim that Fruit is protected under copyright law, but not under any contract aspect of the GPL.

But GPL *IS* a form of copyright.

[Michael Sherwin]

We are going in circles here. If I never saw another chess program other than Fruit and I wanted to write a chess program, so I used Fruit as a guide then my program is derived from Fruit. If anyone asked me, 'where did you derive the knowledge from to write your own program', then I would have to answear that I derived it from Fruit. Therefore Rybka is a derivitive of Fruit. However, the GPL does not apply, because, there is nothing original in Fruit and I can quote the author himself as saying that there is nothing original.

So, in the case of Fruit at least the GPL may not be valid under the law.

If this were true, then anyone who had read the source of Fruit (or any other GPL program) and writes a program that uses something he has learned is writing a GPL program. And if that is true, then GPL is viral in a horrible way beyond any imagining.

It is like saying, "If you have read my book and later write your book on the same subject, then your book also belongs to me."

Yes, that is what it implies! But, only pertaining to original never before known content.

alpha-beta, null move, history huristic, hash tables, common move ordering, PVS, IID, futility, etc. None of these things are licenseable as they are not original, but rather derived from someone elses work that has been freely submitted to the public.

However, this does not imply that you do not own copyright to your program derived from known ideas. In the same way, a poem or song is written using known words, patterns, etc. However it belongs to the author in its implementation.

But having written a song about a bluebird's beautiful color, I do not own the rights to all songs about the color of a bluebird even though the content will be approximately the same

That is why I made the claim that Fruit is protected under copyright law, but not under any contract aspect of the GPL.

But GPL *IS* a form of copyright.

It is also an agreed to contract!

[Dann Corbit]

So the type of derivation matters! But, then again the law is always open to reinterpretation! At the next court case the definition of derivation as applies to the GPL can change!

That is certainly possible. In my mind law is:
x) written law +
y) court/judge interpretation +
z) a random factor.

Still if you shot someone and your best justification is "I was cleaning the gun and..." I don't think you can expect much even by reinterpretations and/or random factors. Unless you're rich enough, of course.

We should ask Spider Sabich what he thinks about it.

[Dann Corbit]

We are going in circles here. If I never saw another chess program other than Fruit and I wanted to write a chess program, so I used Fruit as a guide then my program is derived from Fruit. If anyone asked me, 'where did you derive the knowledge from to write your own program', then I would have to answear that I derived it from Fruit. Therefore Rybka is a derivitive of Fruit. However, the GPL does not apply, because, there is nothing original in Fruit and I can quote the author himself as saying that there is nothing original.

So, in the case of Fruit at least the GPL may not be valid under the law.

If this were true, then anyone who had read the source of Fruit (or any other GPL program) and writes a program that uses something he has learned is writing a GPL program. And if that is true, then GPL is viral in a horrible way beyond any imagining.

It is like saying, "If you have read my book and later write your book on the same subject, then your book also belongs to me."

Yes, that is what it implies! But, only pertaining to original never before known content.

alpha-beta, null move, history huristic, hash tables, common move ordering, PVS, IID, futility, etc. None of these things are licenseable as they are not original, but rather derived from someone elses work that has been freely submitted to the public.

However, this does not imply that you do not own copyright to your program derived from known ideas. In the same way, a poem or song is written using known words, patterns, etc. However it belongs to the author in its implementation.

But having written a song about a bluebird's beautiful color, I do not own the rights to all songs about the color of a bluebird even though the content will be approximately the same

That is why I made the claim that Fruit is protected under copyright law, but not under any contract aspect of the GPL.

But GPL *IS* a form of copyright.

It is also an agreed to contract!

No it isn't:
http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/