The near future of computer chess

[Milos]

Don's no hypocrite. He's consistently stated the same position, over and over:

Using ideas from other programs is what everyone does, and is fine.
Wholesale copying of other people's code is plagarism and is not fine.

Using ideas from programs you personally believe (and claim) are plagiarism is HYPOCRISY.
It's like investing money from drug trafficking into developing food production. It's obvious Don is unable (or pretending not) to see this.
A question is why so many other ppl are pretending not to see it.

[Don]

Of course I used ideas from available sources, either source code or from this forum or others. Every program author does this.

This is how all human endeavors work and every computer chess program works. It's how it's supposed to be - you build on the works of others because it's just stupid to start from scratch.

You are a hypocrite. Plain and simple.
For everyone that doesn't know why here is a simple thought experiment in a form of a question to answer:

If Ippolit sources never appeared what would have been today's rating of Komodo?

That is the most ridiculously twisted argument I have heard yet. Of course I use the ideas of other programs included the plagiarized programs. If Ippolit had not existed my program would probably be 20 ELO weaker, most of ideas in Ippolit have not even worked in my program and what is left over may have helped by 2 or 3 ELO. In fact the primary reason I even looked at Ippolit is pressure from Larry who has a bit of an inferiority complex, he believes that everyone does everything better than us. I got more ideas from Stockfish than any other program and even most of those did not work. The majority of ideas that worked well came from experiments we did ourselves, or we received on this forum.

So what does that have to do with anything here? Again, you guys are making the completely ridiculous assertion that if some program implements alpha beta pruning, then NO OTHER program has a right to implement it and THUS it should be ok for everyone to blatantly copy code! What a completely nonsensical line of reasoning here. Screaming it out loudly and calliing almost every original author (the vast majority who feels EXACTLY the way I do) a hypocrite does not make you look very good.

It's a very simple question. Don is experienced in disassembling (to use his own expression) "like my grandmother", so he would definitively not be able to extract the ideas of Rybka for himself.

I am not very experienced in disassembling code. I could if I had to of course, but Richard Vida does it for a living and I am a baby compared to him. To Richard all programs might as well be open source - so not publishing my sources is only a small protection. I know that Richard disassembles Komodo and I have no problem with that. I know that has actually skill and does not need to copy code in order to have something that plays strong - but I also know that like all of us he learns from others. Of course to YOU learning from other is the same as STEALING their code. You don't make that distinction at all because it does not support your own code theft morality.

Now he is using ideas from a program he personally believes is a plagiarism of another program he already condemned as a plagiarism of a third program. And all his talented programming skills and year of experience would mean shit in terms of strength of his beloved Komodo if there were no sources of Ippolit available.
And he sees no problem with that. Well it's time to call it by its real name and Ed actually did it. It's called HYPOCRISY.

Don't flatter yourself. There is nothing special in any program that would not have been figured out very shortly by everyone else. You clearly have no historical perspective on computer chess do you? You children need to go back to school and learn your history. You guys put Ippolit on some kind of pedestal. As you can see a single programmer was able to blow your beloved Ippolit out of the water despite the hundreds of worker drones who are working together in the name of all that is good and righteous to prove everyone else is evil. And all those guys cannot even keep up with this one idiot who stabbed them in the back and is laughing at their ridiculous Decembrist movement.

[Don]

Don's no hypocrite. He's consistently stated the same position, over and over:

Using ideas from other programs is what everyone does, and is fine.
Wholesale copying of other people's code is plagarism and is not fine.

Using ideas from programs you personally believe (and claim) are plagiarism is HYPOCRISY.
It's like investing money from drug trafficking into developing food production. It's obvious Don is unable (or pretending not) to see this.
A question is why so many other ppl are pretending not to see it.

It's not like that at all. I personally don't believe that you have any right to "own" an idea. I am not a capitalist like you must be if you believe that. U.S. law makes ideas something that can be bought and sold and protected but I don't buy into that.

So now if some disreputable people come up with good ideas and publish them, then I have no obligation to refrain from using them and put myself at a disadvantage. If that were the case then I guess I am a hypocrite for using alpha/beta pruning and Hash tables in my program. That's how stupid and utterly ridiculous your line of reasoning is here.

Now honestly, stop being ridiculous and tell me if you really believe that every top programmer is unethical for using modern programming techniques such as LMR and null move pruning.

I think the argument that you are trying to construct is that if you use any modern programming technique, then you should automatically be in favor of blatant code rip-offs.

[Milos]

It's not like that at all. I personally don't believe that you have any right to "own" an idea. I am not a capitalist like you must be if you believe that. U.S. law makes ideas something that can be bought and sold and protected but I don't buy into that.

So now if some disreputable people come up with good ideas and publish them, then I have no obligation to refrain from using them and put myself at a disadvantage. If that were the case then I guess I am a hypocrite for using alpha/beta pruning and Hash tables in my program. That's how stupid and utterly ridiculous your line of reasoning is here.

No you are not a hypocrite for using alpha-beta or LMR.
You are a hypocrite for using ideas that are obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical.
That makes you unethical in your own system of values.
And ethics seams to be totally strange to you.

[Sune_F]

Ed's case is very weak the way he chose to put it up for discussion - and he will lose it objectively against people who argue as well as Don Dailey does.

I don't think that this means he has no real point.

Actually I think Don ( or whoever did this) put up the alternatives very nicely in principle: there is no problem with multiple competitions: one for original programmers, one for clone wars, one for hardware geeks, etc.

The real problem is that there is a general understanding that a world champion should *still* be the strongest. You can put up some kind of doping rules ( the Tour de France comes to mind here), but if every top competitor is doped the event will die itself rather than anything else.

I think the real problem here are the Ippolit guys who simply chose to ignore the framework of competition that used to be the standard in computerchess land before their arrival. To put it their way: a real "Decembrist's achievement". At least their lead figures are probably chess programmers who would be able to compete successfully within *any* framework of rules.

That's not too different to Fabien's influence: he simply published Fruit's source code - and I am sure he knew exactly what he was doing back then - and how it might change everything - and he enjoyed himself.

I think that Fruit and Ippolit would have to be considered free for all if the competitive aspect of WCCC events should be preserved - not because it is right, just because this can't be avoided anyway ( and this is probably Ed's main point anyway).

Peter

Of course Ed has a good point.

A professional programmer in the year 2011 would not start building an engine from scratch when there are so many very strong open source engines out there.
Nobody does that in this day an age, it just isn't best practice of modern software development.

Apparently there are programmers out there that want to make a contribution, but just don't want to bother with the rather elementary and cumbersome nitty gritty stuff of eg. debugging a move generator.

Their only choice is to lie about its origin and hope they get away with it if they want to compete in a real tournament. Improving a strong open source engine by several hundred points is not being recognized as an achievement.
In some way it should. Taking software and improving it should not be frowned upon just because some of us took the long road home.

On the other hand, we really don't want 10 minor tweaked Ippos* competing in the next WCCC, so I'm not sure what can be done.

[Terry McCracken]

It's not like that at all. I personally don't believe that you have any right to "own" an idea. I am not a capitalist like you must be if you believe that. U.S. law makes ideas something that can be bought and sold and protected but I don't buy into that.

So now if some disreputable people come up with good ideas and publish them, then I have no obligation to refrain from using them and put myself at a disadvantage. If that were the case then I guess I am a hypocrite for using alpha/beta pruning and Hash tables in my program. That's how stupid and utterly ridiculous your line of reasoning is here.

No you are not a hypocrite for using alpha-beta or LMR.
You are a hypocrite for using ideas that are obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical.
That makes you unethical in your own system of values.
And ethics seams to be totally strange to you.

Get a life you obnoxious jerk.

[wgarvin]

It's not like that at all. I personally don't believe that you have any right to "own" an idea. I am not a capitalist like you must be if you believe that. U.S. law makes ideas something that can be bought and sold and protected but I don't buy into that.

So now if some disreputable people come up with good ideas and publish them, then I have no obligation to refrain from using them and put myself at a disadvantage. If that were the case then I guess I am a hypocrite for using alpha/beta pruning and Hash tables in my program. That's how stupid and utterly ridiculous your line of reasoning is here.

No you are not a hypocrite for using alpha-beta or LMR.
You are a hypocrite for using ideas that are obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical.
That makes you unethical in your own system of values.
And ethics seams to be totally strange to you.

Milos, your argument is nonsensical. What is "ideas obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical" supposed to mean? Kidnapping chess programmers and beating their best ideas out of them?

Studying other people's programs and learning ideas from them, is not unethical. [Edit: Regardless of how those programs were written, what their legal status is, etc.]

Several versions of Rybka contained code copied from Fruit. Houdini 1 appears to have contained a lot of code copied from Ippolit. Copying other programmer's code without their permission is definitely unethical. Learning ideas from studying their programs and then using those ideas in your own code is not.

[kranium]

It's not like that at all. I personally don't believe that you have any right to "own" an idea. I am not a capitalist like you must be if you believe that. U.S. law makes ideas something that can be bought and sold and protected but I don't buy into that.

So now if some disreputable people come up with good ideas and publish them, then I have no obligation to refrain from using them and put myself at a disadvantage. If that were the case then I guess I am a hypocrite for using alpha/beta pruning and Hash tables in my program. That's how stupid and utterly ridiculous your line of reasoning is here.

No you are not a hypocrite for using alpha-beta or LMR.
You are a hypocrite for using ideas that are obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical.
That makes you unethical in your own system of values.
And ethics seams to be totally strange to you.

Milos, your argument is nonsensical. What is "ideas obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical" supposed to mean? Kidnapping chess programmers and beating their best ideas out of them?

Studying other people's programs and learning ideas from them, is not unethical. [Edit: Regardless of how those programs were written, what their legal status is, etc.]

Several versions of Rybka contained code copied from Fruit. Houdini 1 appears to have contained a lot of code copied from Ippolit. Copying other programmer's code without their permission is definitely unethical. Learning ideas from studying their programs and then using those ideas in your own code is not.

Wylie-

the point Milos is trying to communicate makes perfect sense:

originally (and still today) Ippolit has been condemned, blacklisted, and accused of the ridiculous notion of being a clone of Rybka 3...
Don (among others) has been quite vocal in this regard. He (and Larry, and the entrenched CCC establishment) have often advocated strongly and quite harshly against it.

yet he (and others..i.e. Stockfish authors, etc.) admits benefiting from it's publication...?
(and i'm confident the benefit is substantial)

the only analogy i can fathom is of:
shooting the messenger, then raping him.

yes, absolutely...
it's utterly hypocritical to condemn it, illegitimize it, but use it anyway

[Terry McCracken]

It's not like that at all. I personally don't believe that you have any right to "own" an idea. I am not a capitalist like you must be if you believe that. U.S. law makes ideas something that can be bought and sold and protected but I don't buy into that.

So now if some disreputable people come up with good ideas and publish them, then I have no obligation to refrain from using them and put myself at a disadvantage. If that were the case then I guess I am a hypocrite for using alpha/beta pruning and Hash tables in my program. That's how stupid and utterly ridiculous your line of reasoning is here.

No you are not a hypocrite for using alpha-beta or LMR.
You are a hypocrite for using ideas that are obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical.
That makes you unethical in your own system of values.
And ethics seams to be totally strange to you.

Milos, your argument is nonsensical. What is "ideas obtained by the means you personally believe are unethical" supposed to mean? Kidnapping chess programmers and beating their best ideas out of them?

Studying other people's programs and learning ideas from them, is not unethical. [Edit: Regardless of how those programs were written, what their legal status is, etc.]

Several versions of Rybka contained code copied from Fruit. Houdini 1 appears to have contained a lot of code copied from Ippolit. Copying other programmer's code without their permission is definitely unethical. Learning ideas from studying their programs and then using those ideas in your own code is not.

Wylie-

the point Milos is trying to communicate makes perfect sense:

originally (and still today) Ippolit has been condemned, blacklisted, and accused of the ridiculous notion of being a clone of Rybka 3...
Don (among others) has been quite vocal in this regard. He (and Larry, and the entrenched CCC establishment) have often advocated strongly and quite harshly against it.

yet he (and others..i.e. Stockfish authors, etc.) admits benefiting from it's publication...?
(and i'm confident the benefit is substantial)

the only analogy i can fathom is of:
shooting the messenger, then raping him.

yes, absolutely...
it's utterly hypocritical to condemn it, illegitimize it, but use it anyway

You're all hopeless. Only idiots make the simple, complex.

[kranium]

You're all hopeless. Only idiots make the simple, complex.

Terry-

very sad to see you log in, offer nothing interesting, just insults of everybody you (even slightly) disagree with...

i wish i could help you..
my 'guess' would be":
you're drinking heavily...?

(that certainly brings out the bad/aggressive/derogatory side of normally civil people.)

if what i'm suggesting is true..i recommend try this:
log in once' sober' and post something substantial or interesting in a kind/gentle manner.

this would go a long way...

regards in all sincerity,
Norm