Rebel wrote:There is only one way for the ICGA to survive
The ICGA is actually thriving, and shows no signs of perishing at all. Of course Chess has lost most of its interest for the AI community, which was already reflected in the name change ICCA -> ICGA. To think it has lost much of its glory because some fanatics do not like the way it conducts is business for orthodox Chess is quite, well, short-sighted and narrow-minded.
and regain the legitime right to call themselves the representives of the vast majority of the chess programmers organizing a world championship. In case you did not noticed (or aren't willing to admit) there is a deep split among the chess programmers and the fans of CC, notable caused by the ICGA itself.
That seem to be two independent issues, mentioned in the same breath. That there is a deep split between Chess programmers and CC fans doesn't at all exclude that the ICGA represents the majority of Chess programmers. The ICGA was not founded as a consumer organization. If the interests of fans and the majority programmers don't coincide, it is logical that they serve the programmer's interests. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
As such I consider the word-title as vacant (the topic at hand) until they resolve the problems and unite the chess programmers, as it once was.
Well, good for you. It is a free world, and everyone can pick the delusions he likes best.
To establish that and restore the ICGA to its old glory days (note my intention) there need to be a change in leadership. It's obvious nothing is going to change with David in charge.
I don't consider that obvious at all. I am pretty sure David is amenable to reason, and sensitive to the wishes and desires of a large majority of Chess programmers (as opposed to harassment by a single person that wants to coerce him).
It's time for him to leave and handover his responsibilities to people with a fresh look at the situation anno 2014, people who abandon old relic rules that did well till 10 years ago.
Talking about how to improve the rules is always good. I am curious as to what exactly consider 'relic rules', and how you would want to replace them. I am not too crazy myself about the rules (or in fact the interpretation of the rules) for participation of open-source programs. OTOH, do you think it would be a good thing to adopt the rules:
1) Everyone is allowed to participate, with programs written in part or in whole by others.
2) Partcipant that make use of rule 1 are allowed to lie about the origin of their programs, to prevent that the original authors share in their glory
3) If this requires them to lie about the origin of their code, this is of course OK. They must never be denied the rights garnted to them by amendment (2).
??? I agree that decency is mostly a relic of the past (in Computer Chess, anyway), but I don't think that such a rule change would be very succesful.
I also think that it is a great misjudgement of the situation to think that the rules are the problem. The current rules did not prevent participation of Komodo. The current rules did not prevent the participation of Stockfish. If in the next WCCC event both these programs would participate, the problem would be mostly solved, and no one would complain anymore. Now that the consensus seems to be that Ippolyt is not stolen work, I would personally applaud it if the current rules would be interpreted such that one of the Ippo derivatives that is not lying about its origins would be allowed to participate too. Barring them because the 'true authors' are unknown, and thus cannot be asked for permission, is an invalid argument, IMO. Release of code in the public domain or under the GPL is an implicit permission for the code to be used this way. (And that is a legal fact.)
In the last "world championship" none of the participants were top-10 because for 2½ years the ICGA leadership did nothing to resolve the crisis among chess programmers.
What was there too solve? That Houdini, when it still was best, was too chicken to participate unless the rules would first be tweaked so he would be award the title in advance? (No own books, infinitely-many games.) That Marco has sworn never to participate in a World Championship and Tord rather plays the viola?
Would you really want a World Championship where the participants have no say in whether they participate or not? Don't you think such a 'championship' would not be severly criticised by the losers? ("They were running an obsolete version, with a book that is not suitable for my engine"...)
OTOH we have TCEC which is recognized by the top programmers and the fans. Why is it that what Martin can, David is unable?
Which 'top programmers'? Mark Uniacky? Amir Ban? Stephan Mayer-Kahlen? Oh, no, I guess you mean the
real top programmers, which knew how to find the download key...
And do you think that the people that so stubbornly refuse to participate in the WCCC, would allow their engine to participate in TCEC once it was called 'World Championship'? Wouldn't their reasons for not participating stay exactly the same?