LC0 for iPad?

[royb]

Is anyone working on porting LC0 (if that's the right term) to the iPad? My iPad is my main chess playing/analysis platform these days.

[MikeB]

Is anyone working on porting LC0 (if that's the right term) to the iPad? My iPad is my main chess playing/analysis platform these days.

The short answer is "no". There would be a lot of technical hurdles to overcome, that would make it quite infeasible for pro bono work ( nobody is getting paid to work on Lc0). On the other hand , Apple does offer MacBook Pro that does offer a sweet GPU upgrade . for a price of course.

[crem]

It may be not that bad.

Someone is having a very good progress with making an Android version (https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lc0/pull/848), and I expect that it's not that harder to do for iOS. Probably takes a dozen of hours of free time for a knowledgeable person.

Most probably it will be OpenCL version only though.

But noone is doing that right now.

[Ras]

One of the problems with iOS is that installation can be from Apple's app store only. Developer membership costs 99 EUR per year, and more importantly, Apple made its store incompatible with any GPL version. LC0 happens to be under GPL 3, so that wouldn't work unless all LC0 authors would agree to dual licence or change the licence.

If you choose iOS, then you have to accept that Apple thinks you don't need GPL'ed software.

[Hai]

Is anyone working on porting LC0 (if that's the right term) to the iPad? My iPad is my main chess playing/analysis platform these days.

Better to have LC0 on the big iPad Pro

[dkappe]

One of the problems with iOS is that installation can be from Apple's app store only. Developer membership costs 99 EUR per year, and more importantly, Apple made its store incompatible with any GPL version. LC0 happens to be under GPL 3, so that wouldn't work unless all LC0 authors would agree to dual licence or change the licence.

If you choose iOS, then you have to accept that Apple thinks you don't need GPL'ed software.

How do you explain the existence of the GPL’d stockfish in the App Store? So, no, that’s not a reason. I recall someone was making progress a few months ago integrating lc0 into a swift front end. Don’t know what came of it, but you can search the lczero google group.

OpenCL isn’t really a thing for iOS. Tensorflow lite and CoreML (to support the NN capable hardware in newer iOS devices) is probably the way forward.

[adams161]

How do you explain the existence of the GPL’d stockfish in the App Store?

I think you can despite the argument that iOS doesn't support GPL passably get around the limitations by simply making the developers iOS app open source and that might satisfy most GPL right holders as an adequate accommodation.

The problem i see with iOS and your example of stockfish is nobody respects GPL at all even to do that. Popular apps that support Stockfish like Smallfish and chess - analyze this, I have never found any source for. Now on iOS you have to bundle the engine into your code as apps can't open other apps unlike android which can open a separate binary and not keep their code under GPL. But i've not seen yet anyone try to comply with GPL in any real way in most typical apps other than maybe the official stockfish app for iOS.

I guess its obvious to me why no one respects GPL. The apps I listed are popular apps and the authors probably don't want clones competing with them in the app store. So i'm not optimistic anyone with the energy to make a quality LCO app would have any more incentive to respect the license.

[Ras]

How do you explain the existence of the GPL’d stockfish in the App Store?

By the agreement of all Stockfish authors to tolerate the GPL violation that the additional store limitations cause. Effectively, the Stockfish team is dual licencing Stockfish. They have that right, but in order to do that, ALL authors must agree.

If even just one of the authors disagrees and demands Apple to conform to the GPL, Apple will remove the software from the store, as seen with VLC and GNU Go.

[dkappe]

How do you explain the existence of the GPL’d stockfish in the App Store?

By the agreement of all Stockfish authors to tolerate the GPL violation that the additional store limitations cause. Effectively, the Stockfish team is dual licencing Stockfish. They have that right, but in order to do that, ALL authors must agree.

If even just one of the authors disagrees and demands Apple to conform to the GPL, Apple will remove the software from the store, as seen with VLC and GNU Go.

Check in the App Store: it’s under the GPL. No mention of any other license is made.

Just as with GNU Go, any spoilsport, not just the authors, can contact Apple and get stockfish yanked from the App Store. Fortunately mcts/puct isn’t that hard to reimplement (I’ve done it twice myself, once in 100 lines of python and once in golang), so one can develop a non-GPL iOS app that uses the leela nets. Someone just has to have the motivation.

[Ras]

Check in the App Store: it’s under the GPL. No mention of any other license is made.

It is in violation of the GPL. See here why: https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance

Just as with GNU Go, any spoilsport, not just the authors, can contact Apple and get stockfish yanked from the App Store.

That's wrong. Technically, Apple is violating the copyright, but only the copyright holders have the right to take measures against that, not anyone else. Since the Stockfish authors don't want to do that, that boils down to implicit dual licencing.

If any author from the LC0 team is keen on seeing Apple conforming to the GPL and contacts Apple, Apple will remove the software.