A Very Novel Idea Concerning Vas- BE FAIR

[Alexander Schmidt]

No, no, no. Thats garbage. You said he called YOU all this.

And? Insults get usually deleted. Maybe something is still there but I wont waste my time searching it. Ask Graham. Maybe he remembers.

[Steve B]

Hi Rob

am i reading your post correctly?
it seems you are acknowledging the Friut---> Rybka connection here

Hi Steve,

You read "correctly".

a fairly significant reversal for you i think?

The short answer is yes...

I cannot possibly understand how a "reasonable" person presented with the information (weeding out or having to wade through all the irrelevant hyperbole)... I cannot understand how one comes to a different conclusion.

Maybe they are similar to me in the respect of needing sufficient time to digest what has been presented. I am not frequent at visiting this board...I think you know this... hence my unfamiliarity with much of what has taken place and what has been presented. Fabien's arrival (and posts) and the posts generated by his arrival has definitely tipped the scales in my view.

It hurts... I do not like acknowledging these things... irrespective of that, I feel a certain duty to the "truth". What matters most to me is what actually happened; not my feelings or how it makes me feel or how I will look to others when acknowledging such things... or even being able to purchase a "good" engine.

or do you feel that Fruit--->Rybka is one thing and Rybka----> Ippo and Family is another?
i have always maintained that the connection of Ippo and family cannot be viewed in a vacumm and must be looked at in terms of Fruit and its first derivative..Rybka ..what follows from that basically is moot..meaning..if you can justify Rybka..then you can justify direct derivates from Rybka

Yes I remember our discussions. I agree with you Steve... call it "fruit of the poisonous tree"; beginning with Rybka that is. It just is not logical... Fabien, Dr Hyatt and others have made that clear to me.

Best to you Steve,
Rob

It takes a very honorable person to write ..what you just wrote
Highest Regards
Steve

[Watchman]

BTW, Fabien did not give any opinion at all. He asked questions, and nothing else.

I sincerely "beg to differ" sir!

I did not post "questions" by him in the "notable quotes" above.

One could say, "Fabien did not give any opinion at all." And I would respond, you are correct he did not give opinion... it would aptly be termed "expert testimony" (in my opinion).

[Rolf]

Not is it is not so convenient and you now don't bother with his opinion at all...

OK, you watch someone kill somebody, with your own two eyes you see the entire act. Do you consider him innocent until he is found guilty in court? I do not. I _know_ what I saw. Same with the fruit/rybka issue. I _know_ what I saw.

It's not just a question of looking and seeing. IMO.

Go for it if you are so sure about it. I am the last who could contradict you because I am a technical layman.

But I know what I saw, namely the titles Vas got after making his program always stronger and stronger. Surely not through always finding new tricks in the old Fruit on Chrismas Eve. That is the reason why all the other programmers dont support the group of 4 or 5. 295 are just watching what is going on and possibly are shocked like me because it doesnt make sense to insinuate that Vas simply copied. Because from where came the material for all the titles???

It doesnt make sense in my eyes. I still beleive in Vasik, that's for sure. It's just not fair how his character has been torn through the mud. NB not every wrong that is done on this planet was intention to betray others. The history of the past five years should have told you a better story than what you are now so much focussed on.

[Watchman]

It takes a very honorable person to write ..what you just wrote
Highest Regards
Steve

I am sincerely humbled by your response... thanks Steve.

[geots]

And again, i say 4 programmers who have studied it will never reach a unified decision.

Amazing! How about 5?! I believe I understand these gentlemen correctly and there is a general consensus.

Dr. Bob Hyatt, Matthias Gemuh, Fabien Letouzey, Dr. Alexander Schmidt, Zach Wegner... I would be willing to bet there are others who "know what they are talking about" would say at least a "more likely than not" burden of proof... if not much stronger.

I would be surprised one could not find 4 more!

We are getting dangerously close to what i call "Follow the crowd simpletons".

I would not say the "naysayers" are simpletons... just dyed-in-the-wool supporters of Vas or simply willing to naysay to justify what engine they wish to use.

I've talked to too many programmers-off the record and dont want to get involved in what they call this- a snake pit.

=================================================

Notable Quotes I pulled... and this just from the, "Fabien's open letter to the community" thread.

"- Vasik claimed that Strelka 2.0 is a clone of Rybka 1.0 (and you know what that would imply!)" > Fabien Letouzey " - Zach Wegner found many Fruit ideas (and nearly identical code) in Rybka 1.0; I think someone else did, too" > Fabien Letouzey

"Implemented algorithms were "translated" to a bitboard infrastructure. The translator ends up with a working implementation of an algorithm he may never have been able to code from scratch. It is "copy and paste" with unavoidable adaptations/translations. That is how DanChess once cloned Crafty's evaluation, and was condemned in this forum as a clone." Matthias Gemuh

"More important is "It was however a whole re-write (copy with different words if you like, similar to a translation) of the algorithms. Not just an extraction of a couple of ideas as is common, and normal. " That says a lot about the issue. In a short summary, strelka encapsulates the ideas and data structures in Fruit, although there is not a character by character match since strelka came from reverse-engineering of Rybka 1. He makes it pretty clear that the "source" for strelka was obviously fruit. Which is what several of us have been saying for a long time. Function names and variable names are, of course, meaningless, assuming the original Rybka beta was stripped of all symbols for reasons unknown. But as I mentioned when the debate started, there are global similarities that are way too significant to write off as random chance of two different programmers writing the same code..." Bob Hyatt

"Of course, this is nothing new to those of us that looked and listened in the first place..." Bob Hyatt "Bob, We never really met, so, nice to meet you! I am sorry that many people apparently did not listen to you." Fabien Letouzey. " Me too. But if someone believes something strong enough, _nothing_ will alter their opinion. Basic human nature. We have now reached a totally insane point in computer chess where we have dozens of strong programs, claiming to not be derivative works." Bob Hyatt

"Proof that Rybka is a Fruit derivative has been presented since Rybka 1.0 beta, though some people will never accept any amount of proof as adequate." Matthias Gemuh

"VR used Fruit code. Noone who looked at the facts can disagree." " Takeing the code, and changeing it is a GPL violation. Thats what happened. There is no other explenation for similaries in non-chess-playing-related-parts like the UCI communication, error messages, crashes." Alexander Schmidt

Bob Hyatt: "Just for the record, to eliminate this specific argument, when Zach, CT, I and others looked at the fruit/rybka1 question, we did _not_ involve Strelka. Strelka was the thing that exposed the issue, but we directly compared fruit to rybka, so the strelka issue could not be raised again..."
Fabien Letouzey: " What happened then?"
Bob Hyatt: "We found _lots_ of similarities. Zach created a web page that went into great detail with the analysis. There are some obvious differences between Fruit and Rybka, but there are a _ton_ of similarities. Too many to be pure luck."


"I would like to put events into proper time-frame / perspective.

1. Strelka came along.

2. Vas looked at it, claimed it was Rybka and therefore he was going to release the strelka source under his name.

3. He then discovered that even if you take a source from a questionable place, once you modify it, the modifications are _your_ copyright. Since Strelka admittedly had some changes made (improvements according to Vas) he then realized he could not release it as his code as then he would be violating the "author's" copyright. Even though Vas had violated the Fruit GPL.

So he was damned if he did (release the code as his own) or damned if he didn't (someone else was getting credit and his ideas were exposed)...

That's all there was to that little episode." Bob Hyatt


"I am not sure how Rybka would be legal in light of the GPL fruit was issued under. I've not seen any source code for Rybka 1 beta, yet I have seen executables, which is a direct violation of the GPL. Strelka is a reverse engineered derivative of fruit. I am not sure what in the hell that means, however. " Bob Hyatt


"Maybe we can ask other people whether they would consider it a new engine. Apart from the different ordering of moves with equal score (due to mailbox vs. bitboard move generation order), the engine behaviour would be identical.

Same search, same eval.

By "huge undertaking", maybe you mean that one has to understand CC basics and modify a lot of code.
But the way I see it is different:
Which is the hugher undertaking:
a) convert Fruit to bitboards
b) write a world-class engine (as of 2005) from scratch"

Fabien Letouzey


"I have always said that changing the infrastucture of move generation (e.g. from mailbox to bitboards) and then adapting (or "translating") the remaining source code is just another form of "copy and paste". The result of the adaption is not a new engine. As a chess programmer, I know what I'm talking about." Matthias Gemuh

"If you start with the complete Fruit code and change it, is it copy and paste? Yes. It's a copy of the whole code. You answered the question yourself. Thats what happend with Rybka, there is no other logical explenation for the similaries in not chess related parts." Alexander Schmidt

Now that you mention Zach, i will give you a history lesson. A year and half ago he left and said he would be back in 2 weeks with irrefutable proof Vas was guilty. He didnt come back for 6 weeks- and came back with nothing. Then didnt mention it anymore. And beside him and Christophe- they had another partner in search of the truth - non other than Norman the cloner. It just got better and better watching them fumble around

[Tom Barrister]

Just because somebody hasn't been proven guilty in a court of law (and even if they've been judged not guilty) doesn't mean that they didn't commit the crime. A lot of guilty people go free or are never caught in the first place.

Mr. Rajlich isn't going to admit he used Fruit source. He never let a qualified independent programmer look at the Rybka source to determine whether or not Rybka was derived from Fruit, nor is he likely to. It's unlikely that anything could be made to stick in a court of law. Does that mean he didn't use Fruit source? No, it does not. It only means he probably won't have to pay the penalty for the crime, at least not directly.

But I know what I saw, namely the titles Vas got after making his program always stronger and stronger. Surely not through always finding new tricks in the old Fruit on Chrismas Eve. That is the reason why all the other programmers dont support the group of 4 or 5. 295 are just watching what is going on and possibly are shocked like me because it doesnt make sense to insinuate that Vas simply copied. Because from where came the material for all the titles???

Maybe he took things from other open-source projects. Maybe he reverse-engineered other commercial programs and took things from them. He might even have had an idea or two of his own.

[Watchman]

Now that you mention Zach, i will give you a history lesson. A year and half ago he left and said he would be back in 2 weeks with irrefutable proof Vas was guilty. He didnt come back for 6 weeks- and came back with nothing.

Thanks for the education... but who cares how long it takes? Why the smugness?

So nothing eh? What do you call the below?

https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html

[geots]

And i almost forgot the best part. Chris Whitty refuted all the crap and even cought one person shifting numbers around to make it look like something it wasnt. If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it in the first round

[Rolf]

It's unlikely that anything could be made to stick in a court of law. Does that mean he didn't use Fruit source? No, it does not. It only means he probably won't have to pay the penalty for the crime, at least not directly.

Ok, Tom, would you agree with me if that is the ultimate legally sound conclusion, that then it wasnt worth it to tear that man's character through the mud? Who is sane enough to think that Vas only won the titles because he copied Fruit and not his extraordinary talent as a programmer?