Previous World Champion Engine Authors Speak Out...

[Terry McCracken]

I agree that Hyatt being in the committee seems wrong.

Hyatt to me is one of the main accusers, he has systematically gathered, structured and argued for the evidence that Rybka is a Fruit clone.

People who have such direct involvement (on any side) cannot be considered "impartial judges".

The best would be if they have some scientists/authors from related fields, like go/checkers/whatever who can fully comprehend the evidence presented but do not have any previous involvement in the issue, whatsoever.

This is what has been wrong with this process from the beginning. You are assuming facts not in evidence. I am not a judge. I will not decide innocence or guilt. I will not hand down a sentence. I am simply supposed to keep the investigation on the topic of "Did Vas copy parts of Fruit (or other programs) verbatim?" We are starting with Rybka 1 beta, but that is not the only version that will be addressed. We may go back to earlier versions, or to later versions (thru Rybka 4) since all have competed.

The panel that will do this is quite large and consists of a large number of programmers. The three "secretariat" members are simply there to try to keep the discussion limited to the specific topic of the investigation, and prevent all the other noise that always shows up here on CCC from obfuscating the technical merits of the arguments being made.

But nobody is paying attention to the document David sent out describing our function. They are making up their own incorrect assumptions and then complaining that those are not fair. However, they are also not real.

In U.S. where you are from to the best of my knowledge, the judge does not decide innocence or guilt, the jury does. The judge is largely responsible for the procedure, as you are in this case.

If you were to stand a trial, would you agree to have as the person responsible for moderating a fair and impartial process someone who has actively gathered, structured and argued on the prosecution side?

That is pretty much the way it works. Who do you think pays the judge? Do you find them in the same building with the district attorney that prosecutes the case? In some types of cases a judge does decide the result. In a jury trial he does not.

Surely there are many specialists who haven't had such a direct involvement in accusing Rajlich, and who could be a moderator? Many wouldn't have your credentials in the field but is that so crucial for moderation? So the question here is: why not someone else as a judge? After years of finger-pointing there at last is a hope for a credible process; by sitting as a judge you are giving the other party the opportunity to call this a witch hunt and dismiss the whole process, on the objective basis that one of the main accusers is sitting as a judge!

To sit on a bench, or try a case, you have to have the proper credentials, experience, training, background, education, etc. I would not want someone off the street to serve as judge for any trial involving me. I'd want a judge that is familiar with the law. There are always checks and balances. My only goal here is to make certain all the evidence is presented, and that Vas has a chance to respond point by point. And for this tete' a tete' to continue until everything that needs saying has been said, by both sides. Then the ICGA will have the ball kicked into their court to decide what, if anything, should be done...

I want judges that are willing to punish. I want prosecutors that diligently try to prove a defendant guilty. I want a vigorous defense of that defendant so that at the end of the day, hopefully justice will be served. At some point, you have to trust the system, and the people involved. In this case I believe there will be enough evidence available that the ICGA won't have to give much thought to innocence or guilt, and that they will have access to all the mitigating arguments the defense might present. At that point, it is their ballgame.

I cant believe you wrote all the above. All you "want" is for Vas to be found guilty. Trying to hide it in a civics lesson wont work. You stated that you were asked to take this particular position in the matter. Well, if you have any character left at all, you will step down and let unbiased people handle this- if any can be drug up.

But in the end, they can drool on about this and that and what they think, but nothing will be decided unless they have access to the code or codes from later versions after Beta 1, and Vas is not stupid enough to give you or them access to any of it. Face it- you are not going to find out why he is so much smarter than you and the rest. And in the end, that is all this witch hunt is about. All this bullshit needs to be sold to someone who's buying.

What's your name, Chandler Yergin??

You couldn't be further from the truth if you tried and you did!

You're doing the smear campaign and I think moderation should be watching your posts.

What do you know of the other programmers? What do you know about the ICGA which has been in place since the mid seventies? What do you know about David Levy or anyone for that matter?

And when it comes right down to it, what do you know about Vasik Rajlich?

Apparently not much!

[geots]

And Sign The OPEN letter to the ICGA President

http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4038

excluding the Engine Author under examination .. we have all but one World Champion engine author since 1992 signing the letter
it should be remembered that these men were fierce competitors for many years ..so seeing them all agree to the notion that Rybka is an unauthorized Fruit derivative is quite astonishing and remarkable

Of course many other highly respected and talented Engine authors also signed the letter..some of whom might have been World Champions themselves if not losing to the engine in question or deciding not to even compete entirely in the ICGA World Championships given the participation of the allegedly illegally derived engine

Bob Hyatt ..a World Champion author himself of course did not sign as he is on the panel invested with making a determination on the derivative issue

i think this is unprecedented in the history of competitive sport Regards
Steve

Bob Hyatt ..a World Champion author himself of course did not sign as he is on the panel invested with making a determination on the derivative issue


I cant believe you state this in passing, because I cant believe you dont see anything wrong with him being on this panel. He has stated he knows Vas is guilty, and even if he is found innocent he is guilty. And you dont call this lynch mob mentality. How would you like to be the one Bob is making a decision about? This whole deal is about as slimy as computer chess can get.

I have clearly said that based on what I have seen with my own eyes, there is no doubt copying has occurred. It is _possible_ that Vas might somehow explain the identical parts of the code satisfactorily. I can't imagine what that might be, but it is possible.

My responsibility here is going to be to let the "prosecution" show the existing evidence everyone has seen, plus some other very significant evidence hardly anyone has seen, and then let Vas respond, if he chooses to. He can take the evidence point by point and explain why he believes it does not represent a problem of plagiarism or GPL violation. Then the "prosecution" will get to respond to his comments. And we will repeat this until nothing new is being shown. At that point, we will write a report giving the evidence and counter-evidence and send this to the ICGA. What they might do with it is unknown. It could involve stripping titles won with improper code, it could involve a "bad boy, don't do it again", or it could result in nothing at all.

We are not the jury. The three of us are a 3-judge panel to make sure that the discussions stay on topic, no flame wars, no personal conflicts. Just show the evidence and address it as needed until nothing more can be added...

There's no lynching. But I will bet you that once you see _everything_ you will change your opinion about what has happened. At least if you are willing to look at the evidence for yourself. There is a lot to be told here. Including a few shocks along the way...

I'm reminded here of what a friend of mine who is in the oil business once said: "I've hit enough dry holes to know the sound of sucking wind".

[wolfv]

The same is happening here, in the Rybka case. Each one of us does have some expectations and each one is biased in a way. The same applies to Hyatt, who is twice as aware of the above, being an academician (I am one, too and know how he can feel). Hyatt is most likely _not_ biased so as not to recognize the validity of the opposing party, so to speak, because he's been trained to accept falsifying evidence, one way or another, even if it goes against his deepest conviction.

Not to mention his long history of completely unbiased feelings and posts regarding Vas.

I am sorry to say this, Albert, but I believe that sometimes you simply do not understand things. I just explained that Bob Hyatt may even feel very strongly about Vas, in a negative sense, of course, and still be fair in judging the facts, and facts alone. I also tried to give examples from philosophy of science that show that every single instance of thinking about an issue is "theory laden" (that we all have preconceived ideas about the object/entity we wish to investigate) and thus prove that no man can be devoid of having at least some kind of partiality, and favor one above the other, so to speak. But you failed to understand my post that was very simple.

To tell you the truth, I've come to a simple conclusion: a. either you are much too bigoted and as such cannot understand things because your thinking is clouded by your bigotry; or b. you have no capacity to show empathy for the other side and, at least virtually, or vicariously, put yourself in the other man's shoes. Whichever of the two it is, if I were you I'd try to re-examine myself. One more side effect is, of course, that you most likely cannot be a good teacher because your grading would be awfully flawed... and biased no end.

Have a nice weekend.

[K I Hyams]

The same is happening here, in the Rybka case. Each one of us does have some expectations and each one is biased in a way. The same applies to Hyatt, who is twice as aware of the above, being an academician (I am one, too and know how he can feel). Hyatt is most likely _not_ biased so as not to recognize the validity of the opposing party, so to speak, because he's been trained to accept falsifying evidence, one way or another, even if it goes against his deepest conviction.

Not to mention his long history of completely unbiased feelings and posts regarding Vas.

When it comes to behaving in an unbiased way, I remind you that you are the man who as a consequence of completely misrepresenting Zach’s work, had to admit that you had dismissed it without even reading it.

Link? (to the part about 'completely misrepresenting Zach's work', since I have not read it)

You haven’t made it clear whether you want a link to the work that you misrepresented by claiming that it referred only to the UCI parser or simply a link to the claim that it referred only to the UCI parser. I assume that it is the second of the 2 possibilities to which you refer. In which case, the link to the first in the sequence of 3 posts that I used is
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 23&t=32651

If you are looking for a link to Zach’s work that you misrepresented, you referred to it yourself so you can find it yourself.

You ignored the question that Zach asked you in the 4th and final post in that sequence. Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer it now. The URL is below.
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 1240&t=326

[Terry McCracken]

And Sign The OPEN letter to the ICGA President

http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4038

excluding the Engine Author under examination .. we have all but one World Champion engine author since 1992 signing the letter
it should be remembered that these men were fierce competitors for many years ..so seeing them all agree to the notion that Rybka is an unauthorized Fruit derivative is quite astonishing and remarkable

Of course many other highly respected and talented Engine authors also signed the letter..some of whom might have been World Champions themselves if not losing to the engine in question or deciding not to even compete entirely in the ICGA World Championships given the participation of the allegedly illegally derived engine

Bob Hyatt ..a World Champion author himself of course did not sign as he is on the panel invested with making a determination on the derivative issue

i think this is unprecedented in the history of competitive sport Regards
Steve

Bob Hyatt ..a World Champion author himself of course did not sign as he is on the panel invested with making a determination on the derivative issue


I cant believe you state this in passing, because I cant believe you dont see anything wrong with him being on this panel. He has stated he knows Vas is guilty, and even if he is found innocent he is guilty. And you dont call this lynch mob mentality. How would you like to be the one Bob is making a decision about? This whole deal is about as slimy as computer chess can get.

I have clearly said that based on what I have seen with my own eyes, there is no doubt copying has occurred. It is _possible_ that Vas might somehow explain the identical parts of the code satisfactorily. I can't imagine what that might be, but it is possible.

My responsibility here is going to be to let the "prosecution" show the existing evidence everyone has seen, plus some other very significant evidence hardly anyone has seen, and then let Vas respond, if he chooses to. He can take the evidence point by point and explain why he believes it does not represent a problem of plagiarism or GPL violation. Then the "prosecution" will get to respond to his comments. And we will repeat this until nothing new is being shown. At that point, we will write a report giving the evidence and counter-evidence and send this to the ICGA. What they might do with it is unknown. It could involve stripping titles won with improper code, it could involve a "bad boy, don't do it again", or it could result in nothing at all.

We are not the jury. The three of us are a 3-judge panel to make sure that the discussions stay on topic, no flame wars, no personal conflicts. Just show the evidence and address it as needed until nothing more can be added...

There's no lynching. But I will bet you that once you see _everything_ you will change your opinion about what has happened. At least if you are willing to look at the evidence for yourself. There is a lot to be told here. Including a few shocks along the way...

I'm reminded here of what a friend of mine who is in the oil business once said: "I've hit enough dry holes to know the sound of sucking wind".

You're just breaking wind. Effectively, you're trolling.

[Albert Silver]

The same is happening here, in the Rybka case. Each one of us does have some expectations and each one is biased in a way. The same applies to Hyatt, who is twice as aware of the above, being an academician (I am one, too and know how he can feel). Hyatt is most likely _not_ biased so as not to recognize the validity of the opposing party, so to speak, because he's been trained to accept falsifying evidence, one way or another, even if it goes against his deepest conviction.

Not to mention his long history of completely unbiased feelings and posts regarding Vas.

When it comes to behaving in an unbiased way, I remind you that you are the man who as a consequence of completely misrepresenting Zach’s work, had to admit that you had dismissed it without even reading it.

Link? (to the part about 'completely misrepresenting Zach's work', since I have not read it)

You haven’t made it clear whether you want a link to the work that you misrepresented by claiming that it referred only to the UCI parser or simply a link to the claim that it referred only to the UCI parser. I assume that it is the second of the 2 possibilities to which you refer. In which case, the link to the first in the sequence of 3 posts that I used is
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 23&t=32651

If you are looking for a link to Zach’s work that you misrepresented, you referred to it yourself so you can find it yourself.

You ignored the question that Zach asked you in the 4th and final post in that sequence. Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer it now. The URL is below.
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 1240&t=326

It is as I said in the thread, I was not referring to the website at all. As to Zach's question, it was answered before his question. It seems he simply did not understand, or missed the post.

[SuneF]

NO it isn't "a fact". There are parts of my eval that are not "bitboard-centric". Low-level stuff is, but not all. Ditto for move generation. One can hide much with macros.

You can hide everything with macros if you create enough of them, but that's "in theory". Let's stick to the actual relevant case.

1) Fruit uses board->square[from] a lot, it doesn't translate to bitboard. Fruit is also full of magic numbers (offsets) that doesn't translate. It's a totally different approach to doing move generation with bitboards where you work with bitwise operators and mask out bits.

2) Evaluation has the same issues. Lots of board->square[to], piece lists and pattern matching that looks completely different in bitboards.

3) You've stated yourself for years that coding bitboards requires a different way of thinking. Why the sudden change of mind?

4) This is not about Crafty. I could state that you cannot easily convert Frenzee to mailbox by changing a few macros, but this is not about Frenzee either.

And then there is the issue of hashing, which would be the same in the eval whether you use bitboards or not (pawn hash, perhaps king safety as some use).

How can this be the same? Again totally different structures to work with.

And then we get to critical things like search, move ordering, pruning, reductions, extensions. He could have copied significant parts.

Anyone could. You'd expect hash move, winning captures, killers and so forth. It's all pretty standard stuff as is nullmove and LMR. You'd need to see something very unsual being used, something identifiable as comming from Fruit. And again ideas can be copied so it would have to be something rather copy-paste like.

And you are overlooking the issue that we now know that he copied parts of Crafty, which _is_ a bitboard program. Suddenly the changes to Fruit's eval don't appear to be so difficult since all the support code may well have been copied (we are quantifying this as I write.)

I'm not overlooking anything. You may not recall but I've stated from the start that I thought Strelka appeared to have just as many Crafty-like ideas as Fruit ideas, but I guess that didn't fit in well with the Fruit-derivative label you wanted to slap on it.

We also know that Rybka has new important material terms in the evaluation and the search seems original as well.

"seems" original? How would one conclude that. PVs, depth and node counts are intentionally misrepresented to hide search details. Every think to wonder "why"???

It "seemed" original because noone had ever used a large well tuned material table before.
Don't get paranoid about the disguised depth and nps numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if some are faking nps or depth to impress others with the speed or cleverness of their engine.

What annoys me most about this whole issue is that we do not have objective means and rules to specify what is legal to copy and what is not. It's always a judgement call in every single case. This makes the whole process too ad hoc and un-scientific IMHO.

At the basic level, nothing can be copied. We have at least agreed previously that everyone can use egtb.cpp if they get Eugene's permission. Ditto for my rotated bitboard move generation (and now Pradu's magic move generation code). Hopefully as this progresses, we can finally formalize a statement about this specific issue. I still like my idea of it is ok to copy F(x) where we have a relationship Y = F(X) where for each unique value of X, there is one and only one unique value Y that the function can return. Move generators. SEE. SAN input/output. Not evaluation, or search, or move ordering, or hashing, or any of a number of other things. Whether everyone will agree to that or not is unknown, but it offers a pretty precise definition that any decent programmer can understand and follow.

That depends, at least for the move generation it is far from trivial. You can have incremental, check evading, legal, sorted and capture only move generation. Move generation is also very tightly coupled to the basic structures and it should not be allowed to copy those.

[bob]

NO it isn't "a fact". There are parts of my eval that are not "bitboard-centric". Low-level stuff is, but not all. Ditto for move generation. One can hide much with macros.

You can hide everything with macros if you create enough of them, but that's "in theory". Let's stick to the actual relevant case.

1) Fruit uses board->square[from] a lot, it doesn't translate to bitboard. Fruit is also full of magic numbers (offsets) that doesn't translate. It's a totally different approach to doing move generation with bitboards where you work with bitwise operators and mask out bits.

Not so fast. Is Crafty bitboard? Yet it _still_ has board[64]. So Fruits eval could be made to work in the crafty framework with not a lot of effort, mainly just dealing with renumbered squares since my board is only 64 elements. It would be a decidedly "unbitboard" approach, but it would work just fine since tree->board[from] would work. Or you could use Board(from) which is a macro I use to make the code easier to read... Move generation shouldn't be done using that array, but it could.

2) Evaluation has the same issues. Lots of board->square[to], piece lists and pattern matching that looks completely different in bitboards.

"Should" look completely different. See above. You can use Board(from) in Crafty anywhere you want to get the piece on square "from". No bitboard accesses and MSB/LSB operations required. Not how bitboards are intended to work, but they _can_ be used like that...

3) You've stated yourself for years that coding bitboards requires a different way of thinking. Why the sudden change of mind?

Simple. The difference between "should" and "could". It is clearly possible to stuff the fruit eval right into Crafty. Deal with the re-numbered squares since the two programs use two different array sizes for the mailbox board, and you are ready to go. It would not be as fast, it would not be a "clean bitboard" program. But you can't say "impossible"... That was my point.

4) This is not about Crafty. I could state that you cannot easily convert Frenzee to mailbox by changing a few macros, but this is not about Frenzee either.

Are you following the discussion? We now know that the pre-fruit version of Rybka copied a lot of crafty source. So now the issue becomes taking the fruit eval, plugging it into Crafty. Slowly getting rid of the array references and use bitboard operations. But at each step along the way, you have a working version to compare the new bitboard version to, to simplify testing/debugging.

So this is about Crafty _and_ Fruit...

And then there is the issue of hashing, which would be the same in the eval whether you use bitboards or not (pawn hash, perhaps king safety as some use).

How can this be the same? Again totally different structures to work with.

What do you get when you access a pawn hash entry? Score? flags identifying passed pawns, or weak pawns? some sort of counters for king safety? The pawn hash in Crafty is quite close to the pawn hash entry in Cray Blitz. Anyone can check. yet CB was not bitboard. The hash entry has nothing to do with bitboards...

And then we get to critical things like search, move ordering, pruning, reductions, extensions. He could have copied significant parts.

Anyone could. You'd expect hash move, winning captures, killers and so forth. It's all pretty standard stuff as is nullmove and LMR. You'd need to see something very unsual being used, something identifiable as comming from Fruit. And again ideas can be copied so it would have to be something rather copy-paste like.

Which is exactly what we have been reporting for a couple of years now? Exact matches. And now some examples with oddball bugs that make no sense, yet which appear in both programs? One has to copy these kinds of bugs, or else believe in miracles to think two different programmers compare the return value of a function to a constant that the function has not produced in 10+ years. In Crafty, that code was left in quite by accident. How did it get into _another_ program? Comparing to the exact same constant??? Coincidence??

And you are overlooking the issue that we now know that he copied parts of Crafty, which _is_ a bitboard program. Suddenly the changes to Fruit's eval don't appear to be so difficult since all the support code may well have been copied (we are quantifying this as I write.)

I'm not overlooking anything. You may not recall but I've stated from the start that I thought Strelka appeared to have just as many Crafty-like ideas as Fruit ideas, but I guess that didn't fit in well with the Fruit-derivative label you wanted to slap on it.

First, the structure of Strelka is _nothing_ like the structure of Crafty. Simple to evaluate if you want to lets take procedure by procedure starting at Iterate(). Wait, Strelka doesn't even have an Iterate() function...

Strelka looks fruity. Rybka looks fruity. The pre-fruity version of rybka looks like Crafty. You can ignore the evidence if you want, but none of your comments addresses the specific issues being exposed daily.

We also know that Rybka has new important material terms in the evaluation and the search seems original as well.

"seems" original? How would one conclude that. PVs, depth and node counts are intentionally misrepresented to hide search details. Every think to wonder "why"???

It "seemed" original because noone had ever used a large well tuned material table before.
Don't get paranoid about the disguised depth and nps numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if some are faking nps or depth to impress others with the speed or cleverness of their engine.

I'm not the "thought police". But I don't do this sort of obfuscation... And I have not seen an open source program that does.

What annoys me most about this whole issue is that we do not have objective means and rules to specify what is legal to copy and what is not. It's always a judgement call in every single case. This makes the whole process too ad hoc and un-scientific IMHO.

At the basic level, nothing can be copied. We have at least agreed previously that everyone can use egtb.cpp if they get Eugene's permission. Ditto for my rotated bitboard move generation (and now Pradu's magic move generation code). Hopefully as this progresses, we can finally formalize a statement about this specific issue. I still like my idea of it is ok to copy F(x) where we have a relationship Y = F(X) where for each unique value of X, there is one and only one unique value Y that the function can return. Move generators. SEE. SAN input/output. Not evaluation, or search, or move ordering, or hashing, or any of a number of other things. Whether everyone will agree to that or not is unknown, but it offers a pretty precise definition that any decent programmer can understand and follow.

That depends, at least for the move generation it is far from trivial. You can have incremental, check evading, legal, sorted and capture only move generation. Move generation is also very tightly coupled to the basic structures and it should not be allowed to copy those.

Move generation is a two-part process. First you have to enumerate the moves each piece can make. Then you do something to either include or exclude those move, or re-order them. But for sliding piece moves in a bitboard program, we only know of three possible approaches. And for a bishop on a given square, all three approaches (direct generation ala' Slate/Atkin, Rotated bitboards ala' old crafty, or magic generation from Pradu). All three produce _identical_ output. A 64 bit value with 1's on squares that the bishop can reach and 0's on the squares it can't. Once you get beyond that, I agree that there is lots of room for creativity. I have a generator to generate just captures, just non-captures, just non-capturing checks, and a legal escape from check generator. But they rely on the underlying bitboard move generation that I believe everyone should be able to use. Just like the 0x88 board and approach, or the gnu move list approach..

[bob]

In programming, especially a chess program, adopting significantly large and critical blocks of very specific symbiotic logic and factored weights verbatim is only permissible in an acknowledged code fork. It certainly couldn't pass the smell test as an original work. And the distance between subsequent versions to the plagiarized starting point will hardly matter (to most people) if a programmer is shown to be so dishonest.

Ordinarily yes. What makes the Rybka situation special is that Vas couldn't have adopted "significantly large and critical blocks of very specific symbiotic logic and factored weights verbatim" as Rybka is bitboard and Fruit is mailbox. At least for the evaluation and move generation code it would have to be coded completely different - that is a fact. We also know that Rybka has new important material terms in the evaluation and the search seems original as well.
What they need to prove then, is either that some other parts of the engine contains large parts of copied code (for instance the hashing or protocol) or that large parts of the bitboard code is functionally equivalent to the mailbox code. The latter is a bit problematic however, as most engines are known to contain certain large parts of functionally equivalent codes, like for instance the SEE, Qsearch, Nullmove and so forth. No one would claim Fruit was a derivative of Crafty just because it had sections of nullmove code that was functionally equivalent to Crafty for instance.

What annoys me most about this whole issue is that we do not have objective means and rules to specify what is legal to copy and what is not. It's always a judgement call in every single case. This makes the whole process too ad hoc and un-scientific IMHO.
The process should be reversed, first we need to establish what is legal and what is not, then we need to decide how to punish the rule breakers and only then does it make sense to begin considering the individual engines. Otherwise we are having a trial and jury with no accepted laws to judge by.

Amen to that! Above we actually have a man with a brain that is not afraid to speak out and tell the truth.

Not quite. If someone wants to add the fruit eval to Crafty, it would not take but a day or two.

[bob]

I agree that Hyatt being in the committee seems wrong.

Hyatt to me is one of the main accusers, he has systematically gathered, structured and argued for the evidence that Rybka is a Fruit clone.

People who have such direct involvement (on any side) cannot be considered "impartial judges".

The best would be if they have some scientists/authors from related fields, like go/checkers/whatever who can fully comprehend the evidence presented but do not have any previous involvement in the issue, whatsoever.

This is what has been wrong with this process from the beginning. You are assuming facts not in evidence. I am not a judge. I will not decide innocence or guilt. I will not hand down a sentence. I am simply supposed to keep the investigation on the topic of "Did Vas copy parts of Fruit (or other programs) verbatim?" We are starting with Rybka 1 beta, but that is not the only version that will be addressed. We may go back to earlier versions, or to later versions (thru Rybka 4) since all have competed.

The panel that will do this is quite large and consists of a large number of programmers. The three "secretariat" members are simply there to try to keep the discussion limited to the specific topic of the investigation, and prevent all the other noise that always shows up here on CCC from obfuscating the technical merits of the arguments being made.

But nobody is paying attention to the document David sent out describing our function. They are making up their own incorrect assumptions and then complaining that those are not fair. However, they are also not real.

In U.S. where you are from to the best of my knowledge, the judge does not decide innocence or guilt, the jury does. The judge is largely responsible for the procedure, as you are in this case.

If you were to stand a trial, would you agree to have as the person responsible for moderating a fair and impartial process someone who has actively gathered, structured and argued on the prosecution side?

That is pretty much the way it works. Who do you think pays the judge? Do you find them in the same building with the district attorney that prosecutes the case? In some types of cases a judge does decide the result. In a jury trial he does not.

Surely there are many specialists who haven't had such a direct involvement in accusing Rajlich, and who could be a moderator? Many wouldn't have your credentials in the field but is that so crucial for moderation? So the question here is: why not someone else as a judge? After years of finger-pointing there at last is a hope for a credible process; by sitting as a judge you are giving the other party the opportunity to call this a witch hunt and dismiss the whole process, on the objective basis that one of the main accusers is sitting as a judge!

To sit on a bench, or try a case, you have to have the proper credentials, experience, training, background, education, etc. I would not want someone off the street to serve as judge for any trial involving me. I'd want a judge that is familiar with the law. There are always checks and balances. My only goal here is to make certain all the evidence is presented, and that Vas has a chance to respond point by point. And for this tete' a tete' to continue until everything that needs saying has been said, by both sides. Then the ICGA will have the ball kicked into their court to decide what, if anything, should be done...

I want judges that are willing to punish. I want prosecutors that diligently try to prove a defendant guilty. I want a vigorous defense of that defendant so that at the end of the day, hopefully justice will be served. At some point, you have to trust the system, and the people involved. In this case I believe there will be enough evidence available that the ICGA won't have to give much thought to innocence or guilt, and that they will have access to all the mitigating arguments the defense might present. At that point, it is their ballgame.

I cant believe you wrote all the above. All you "want" is for Vas to be found guilty. Trying to hide it in a civics lesson wont work. You stated that you were asked to take this particular position in the matter. Well, if you have any character left at all, you will step down and let unbiased people handle this- if any can be drug up.

But in the end, they can drool on about this and that and what they think, but nothing will be decided unless they have access to the code or codes from later versions after Beta 1, and Vas is not stupid enough to give you or them access to any of it. Face it- you are not going to find out why he is so much smarter than you and the rest. And in the end, that is all this witch hunt is about. All this bullshit needs to be sold to someone who's buying.

Utter nonsense. Do you believe the only goal of the prosecution is to find the defendant guilty. Even if he is innocent? Or does the prosecutor want to see justice served? The prosecutor's job is to try to present all the evidence suggesting the defendant is guilty to the jury. The defense attorney's job is to present all the evidence suggesting the defendant is innocent to the jury. I have seen prosecutors move to dismiss a case when something unexpected happens at trial that makes it clear to them that this is the wrong person.

So yes, I have been looking at this evidence for a couple of years. As have several others. There is a growing concern that this represents a serious breach of ethics. So far, all we are seeing is a growing pile of evidence showing code was copied in the original rybka, and in the commercial version. Code copied from two different programs. We are seeing _no_ evidence from the defense.

I suppose you are the sort that would say "OK, the defense did not respond, so it is unfair to find him guilty given all the evidence supporting a guilty verdict??" If he doesn't respond, he can't be found guilty? Normally an innocent person protests their innocence strongly. I did when I was accused of cheating.

We don't _need_ the post beta-1 source. We have the binaries. That is providing more than enough evidence of copying. And the evidence is growing steadily. You might not like the truth, but you don't get to hide it.