Competition for stockfish by stockfish derivative is needed

[Evert]

People can agree or disagree with me and it is possible that somebody who agree with me is going to suggest himself to be the new leader.

Nah. Agreeing or disagreeing with you has nothing to do with it either (for the record: I'm not in a position to do either of those, and I'm not interested enough to put myself in a position where I would be).

If someone wanted to do that they'd either have done it already, or they'd do it without encouragement from you (or anyone else).

[Uri Blass]

1)I admit that I did mistakes in the past but the same is for many other people and only I get this type of treatement.

I think it would be good to stop arguing "others do it too".

Others do not trigger the same kind of reaction. Maybe because they accept criticism and adjust, instead of eternally seeking for and complaining about perceived logical contradictions?

If you take a step back and try to look at your "maxply" tests with some common sense, are you still convinced those were worth other people's computing time and electricity bills? Really, common sense is the key here.

2)I do not agree with a big part of the feedback that I got and certainly
not in the way that it was expressed(I will never say to people to stop the madness only because I dislike their tests)

When people refuse to understand mild words, there is not much else left than calling things for what they are.

1)I also accept criticism and adjust.
There are more than one case when I stopped the tests by myself in the middle inspite of not thinking that it is good because I understood that marco is not going to accept it.

2)For my maxply test another person not me confirmed the test and I put it in low priority.
For other people's computing time and electricity bills they are free not to use their machine for testing at time that they do not think that there is an important test so I see no reason to blame me.

Marco also originally claimed
I consider this just a huge use of resources (100,000 80 second per game!) for no real benefit.

"If you really want to waste resources you can directly test with SPRT a version with MAX DEPTH at 150 at LTC and see what's happening...it is still a waste of resources IMHO, but at least not so horrible as in your proposal."

Marco could simply say that he does not let me do my plan and in this case I could avoid starting the tests in the first place but he did not do it.

It was clearly better than what he practically did that caused me
1)Spend time of my tests and only use faster time control.
Saying that I can test SPRT with MAX_DEPTH 150 at LTC (that is not logical from my point of view) is inviting me to try my tests at shorter time control with less games and practically 100000 games at 80 seconds per game is 10 more time than what I really did that is 40000 games at 20 seconds per game.

2)Stop the test in the middle because marco threats:
"You are about to see your series vetoed." that is clearly not needed and the simple words "I do not let you to continue the test so stop it" could be enough.

3)caused bad feeling to me and insulting me not only at the time of testing by asking "how many tests of this madness do you still plan to do" but also by future comments after I stopped the test.

I do not allow you to test X or Y is not insulting because it does not mean that the test is not useful but only that marco is not interested in the results and as the leader he decides what to do.

[syzygy]

1)I also accept criticism and adjust.
There are more than one case when I stopped the tests by myself in the middle inspite of not thinking that it is good because I understood that marco is not going to accept it.

By learning from feedback I mean adjust your attitude towards the testing framework.

2)For my maxply test another person not me confirmed the test and I put it in low priority.
For other people's computing time and electricity bills they are free not to use their machine for testing at time that they do not think that there is an important test so I see no reason to blame me.

I do very much see a reason to blame you, as you continue to be of the view that you should be free to use the resources for insignificant tests just because the resources are there (and they are not currently being used). Your argument based on the assumption that people providing resources could be continuously monitoring whether they are being used for a sensible purpose is not a very good argument (to use a very mild expression) and shows a lack of responsibility on your side.

That another person confirmed the test is a fact, but that doesn't mean the choice to run those tests cannot be criticised. Maybe that person just trusts that you know what you are doing.

Marco could simply say that he does not let me do my plan and in this case I could avoid starting the tests in the first place but he did not do it.

Personally I think Marco should have stepped in more forcefully. I think he tried to find a compromise, but then found out giving a finger resulted in the whole hand being taken.

[ouachita]

I wonder if it is possible to have a different leader with testers who support him to compete against stockfish of marco and accept changes relative to marco's version based on different rules.

the answer is obviously - yes.

[Ralph Stoesser]

I agree the attitude and tone towards you as a person often seems not appropriate. You are a well known member of the computer chess scene since many years and you (correct me if im wrong) are mathematician, so you are somebody with a background in science at least, but even if you were not, there would be no reason for such a treatment.
[Two sentences deleted upon Moderation request because they touch political issues that are offtopic in this forum]

[chessico]

I may be mistaken, of course, but all of that may simply have to do with Asperger. One way or another ...

[Ryan Benitez]

You could easily become the leader of a new SF fork or jump on board a new GPL project. If people jump on another project SF could be surpassed by another non SF GPL project in less than a year. SF seems to be a well run project but more GPL competition would be good for the community. There are good options out there and I am sure more on the way.

[lech]

The problem regards the question ELO or chess engine. E.g. if you want to
solve zugzwang positions, it needs to add a condition to skip the null move
prunning if ttMove is a pawn move and to verify the null move search at the
depth = 8 * ONE_PLY search min. Additionally, if the search at root returns
VLUE_DRAW it needs to set alpha = VALUE_DRAW - 1.
In other case Stockfish will be blind engine.
The solution by parametrs is out of my range as programmer.

[Uri Blass]

1)I also accept criticism and adjust.
There are more than one case when I stopped the tests by myself in the middle inspite of not thinking that it is good because I understood that marco is not going to accept it.

By learning from feedback I mean adjust your attitude towards the testing framework.

2)For my maxply test another person not me confirmed the test and I put it in low priority.
For other people's computing time and electricity bills they are free not to use their machine for testing at time that they do not think that there is an important test so I see no reason to blame me.

I do very much see a reason to blame you, as you continue to be of the view that you should be free to use the resources for insignificant tests just because the resources are there (and they are not currently being used). Your argument based on the assumption that people providing resources could be continuously monitoring whether they are being used for a sensible purpose is not a very good argument (to use a very mild expression) and shows a lack of responsibility on your side.

That another person confirmed the test is a fact, but that doesn't mean the choice to run those tests cannot be criticised. Maybe that person just trusts that you know what you are doing.

Marco could simply say that he does not let me do my plan and in this case I could avoid starting the tests in the first place but he did not do it.

Personally I think Marco should have stepped in more forcefully. I think he tried to find a compromise, but then found out giving a finger resulted in the whole hand being taken.

I see no reason to criticize me for having a different opinion that the framework should allow everyone to give every patch at low priority.

It is possible to disagree with me without criticizing me.
I have no problem to respect rules and it is marco's fault that he did not define clear rules.

If people do not want to give their machine for testing without continuously monitoring if their hardware is used for high priority tests then IMO the best solution is simply have a default option for testers not to test patches with low priority when testers can change it.


After all of this I will probably not give new patches for stockfish or at least not do it under my name and find another person to submit my patches or posts without telling the world that it is my patches or posts(not sure if I will choose to do it).

The reason is simply that I get the feeling that I will always get unfair treatment from marco regardless of what I do only because of the past
and the only way to prevent it is simply if marco does not know who is the real author of the patches.

When Marco start to reply to my post with some non relevant stuff like
"Please don't comment on other people tests: you should be the last one to do comments." then he can also do it to my patches and say

"Please don't commit new patches. you should be the last one to commit patches"

[Isaac]

I do not agree with marco (the leader of stockfish) about a lot of things and one of the problems is that he seems to be too careful not to lose elo and even reject simplifications that are not proved to be bad because of unproved fear that they are 1 elo loss.


I wonder if it is possible to have a different leader with testers who support him to compete against stockfish of marco and accept changes relative to marco's version based on different rules.

1)Simplifications are accepted if they pass twice sprt(-4,0) in first try
and removing one line of if condition is certainly a simplification.

In order to accept other changes they need to pass SPRT(-1.5,4.5) at some time control and SPRT(0,6) at slower time control when the slower time control is not faster than 1 minute per game.

It may be possible also to use lower margin than 6 but the bottom line in the second test needs to be 0.

It does not mean that changes are going to be accepted if they pass and the leader has the freedom not to accept changes(for example if something similar was already tried many times) but tests that pass without being accepted may get a second chance(for example if some patch failed SPRT(0.6) and passed SPRT(0,4) at the same time control then it may be accepted if it pass again SPRT(0.4) without failures with SPRT(0,4))

2)People who commit patches have the freedom to push every patch that they want at every time control that they want and with the number of games that they want or with the SPRT parameters that they want.

3)People who give their machine for testing have the option to decide
which patch to test(they can choose default that is the option that the leader suggest but also can choose to increase or to reduce priority of every candidate to test when priority below -5 means not testing it even if there are no other tests) and I guess that if somebody give obviously bad patches that interest nobody then people including the leader may put them with priority below -5 so no waste of computer time on them.

I like your idea Uri.
A problem I haven't seen mentioned but worth to be mentioned is that this would require a server running 24 hours a day (like Gary's one for the fishtest?) and I'm not sure it's easy to obtain.