Fritz 17

[dkappe]

There are two separate questions here:

1) is a weights file copyrightable?

and

2) are weights files produced using the GPL's training software covered by the GPL?

The answer to #2 is no. That's by intent. Go see the FSF's own explanations of the GPL. If you want that to be the case, you need to use a different license.

The answer to #1 is yes, though IANAL. Chessbase may require you to agree to some additional licensing terms as well. I couldn't tell you since I'm a Linux/Mac user and can't abide Wine.

#1 sources please

#2 you got me wrong, I did not say that the output of an GPL program is under GPL, but that a NN could be licensed under GPL or alike.

If you state #1 is true, then I am free to put my NN under GPL, so all dkappe nets that are based on my one are GPL too.

There are many pretrained models for medical image processing being sold under licenses. I'm not aware of any litigation in this area, but my admittedly non-expert instinct tells me a copyright claim would prevail.

The GPL is probably the wrong license to cover documents or data. Maybe the FDL is more appropriate?

You are free to do whatever you like, within reason. I am also free to not touch any encumbered nets with a ten foot pole. Besides, you're far more likely to use one of my nets rather than the other way around.

[Albert Silver]

it might be worth pointing out the NN weights is not code, it is data

It is, worth pointing out and data.

The purpose of the Lc0 project is to obtain chess knowledge trough self-play. That knowledge is called weights.

As data, it may be outside the umbrella of the licence, but I wonder for how long the result of RL, is going to remain being treated as ordinary data.

No, it is just data. It is literally just a monster text file with a string of 27.9 million numbers each separated by a space. You cannot run it, just consult it. In fact that is why a GPU is so useful. Lc0 runs the basic MCTS search and for every position it asks the GPU to read the weights file to see what it says. This is incredibly time-consuming (all things being relative) which is why the NPS is so absurdly low compared to conventional AB engines.

As to the purpose of the lc0 project, it is none of what you stated. Its purpose is to reproduce AlphaZero for the PC. They have certainly moved on to try to improve on it, but that is how it started and is its purpose. As to selfplay, my first weights that played in TCEC 14 had zero selfplay, yet oddly they worked pretty well. So selfplay is a perk, but hardly a necessity.

Hehe, I do not intend to bug, but what happens if a self-play NN file is under GPL and someone uses it to add additional training on top, still GPL?

Maybe the answer is that you can not copyright NN files, but then the Fat Fritz NN file would be free to copy and modify...

--
Srdja

Selfplay has no bearing on whether an NN file is covered by the GPL, or copyright for that matter. Regarding your second question, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from modifying the Fat Fritz NN file to do as you please, nor do I see anything wrong, so long as you actually purchased it. The fact that I am against DRM does not mean I condone piracy. If you modify it and then distribute it, you are once again on the wrong side of the law.

As to adding additional training, you may find this very hard to do with beneficial results, unless you have the experience, knowledge and resources to do so. And if you have all that in place, wouldn't it be more fun to create your own? I wrote elsewhere about the huge amount of work that went into this, but I would definitely never have bothered if it were pure drudgery.

[smatovic]

it might be worth pointing out the NN weights is not code, it is data

It is, worth pointing out and data.

The purpose of the Lc0 project is to obtain chess knowledge trough self-play. That knowledge is called weights.

As data, it may be outside the umbrella of the licence, but I wonder for how long the result of RL, is going to remain being treated as ordinary data.

No, it is just data. It is literally just a monster text file with a string of 27.9 million numbers each separated by a space. You cannot run it, just consult it. In fact that is why a GPU is so useful. Lc0 runs the basic MCTS search and for every position it asks the GPU to read the weights file to see what it says. This is incredibly time-consuming (all things being relative) which is why the NPS is so absurdly low compared to conventional AB engines.

As to the purpose of the lc0 project, it is none of what you stated. Its purpose is to reproduce AlphaZero for the PC. They have certainly moved on to try to improve on it, but that is how it started and is its purpose. As to selfplay, my first weights that played in TCEC 14 had zero selfplay, yet oddly they worked pretty well. So selfplay is a perk, but hardly a necessity.

Hehe, I do not intend to bug, but what happens if a self-play NN file is under GPL and someone uses it to add additional training on top, still GPL?

Maybe the answer is that you can not copyright NN files, but then the Fat Fritz NN file would be free to copy and modify...

--
Srdja

Selfplay has no bearing on whether an NN file is covered by the GPL, or copyright for that matter. Regarding your second question, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from modifying the Fat Fritz NN file to do as you please, nor do I see anything wrong, so long as you actually purchased it. The fact that I am against DRM does not mean I condone piracy. If you modify it and then distribute it, you are once again on the wrong side of the law.

As to adding additional training, you may find this very hard to do with beneficial results, unless you have the experience, knowledge and resources to do so. And if you have all that in place, wouldn't it be more fun to create your own? I wrote elsewhere about the huge amount of work that went into this, but I would definitely never have bothered if it were pure drudgery.

Okay, just to make it some kind of official, I am sure there are some people interested in this, so the ChessBase/Albert Silver statement is that the NN file of Fat Fritz is covered by copyright?

--
Srdja

[Albert Silver]

it might be worth pointing out the NN weights is not code, it is data

It is, worth pointing out and data.

The purpose of the Lc0 project is to obtain chess knowledge trough self-play. That knowledge is called weights.

As data, it may be outside the umbrella of the licence, but I wonder for how long the result of RL, is going to remain being treated as ordinary data.

No, it is just data. It is literally just a monster text file with a string of 27.9 million numbers each separated by a space. You cannot run it, just consult it. In fact that is why a GPU is so useful. Lc0 runs the basic MCTS search and for every position it asks the GPU to read the weights file to see what it says. This is incredibly time-consuming (all things being relative) which is why the NPS is so absurdly low compared to conventional AB engines.

As to the purpose of the lc0 project, it is none of what you stated. Its purpose is to reproduce AlphaZero for the PC. They have certainly moved on to try to improve on it, but that is how it started and is its purpose. As to selfplay, my first weights that played in TCEC 14 had zero selfplay, yet oddly they worked pretty well. So selfplay is a perk, but hardly a necessity.

Hehe, I do not intend to bug, but what happens if a self-play NN file is under GPL and someone uses it to add additional training on top, still GPL?

Maybe the answer is that you can not copyright NN files, but then the Fat Fritz NN file would be free to copy and modify...

--
Srdja

Selfplay has no bearing on whether an NN file is covered by the GPL, or copyright for that matter. Regarding your second question, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from modifying the Fat Fritz NN file to do as you please, nor do I see anything wrong, so long as you actually purchased it. The fact that I am against DRM does not mean I condone piracy. If you modify it and then distribute it, you are once again on the wrong side of the law.

As to adding additional training, you may find this very hard to do with beneficial results, unless you have the experience, knowledge and resources to do so. And if you have all that in place, wouldn't it be more fun to create your own? I wrote elsewhere about the huge amount of work that went into this, but I would definitely never have bothered if it were pure drudgery.

Okay, just to make it some kind of official, I am sure there are some people interested in this, so the ChessBase/Albert Silver statement is that the NN file of Fat Fritz is covered by copyright?

--
Srdja

Yes.

[Ovyron]

Guys, let me introduce you to:

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates

It's just a book full of random numbers.

It doesn't matter how were they produced, or who produced them, that specific series of numbers is protected by copyright, you can't just get the book and make copies for your friends or distribute it online.

Now, tell me, what is the difference between this and Fat Fritz' weights file?

What's the difference between buying this book, parsing the random numbers, and distributing them, and buying Fat Fritz, getting the weights file, and distributing it?

[Dann Corbit]

I don't know how stuff works in Europe and other continents, but in the US, you do not have to do anything to get a copyright for your work.
You have to register the copyright only if you want to pursue a lawsuit.
But you do have to apply for a patent or trademark.

So, if I write a post in this forum, it is automatically copyright by me in the US.
But don't worry, you can quote it. That's fair use.

Not sure why anything I say ought to be quotable though.

[Dann Corbit]

Guys, let me introduce you to:

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates

It's just a book full of random numbers.

It doesn't matter how were they produced, or who produced them, that specific series of numbers is protected by copyright, you can't just get the book and make copies for your friends or distribute it online.

Now, tell me, what is the difference between this and Fat Fritz' weights file?

What's the difference between buying this book, parsing the random numbers, and distributing them, and buying Fat Fritz, getting the weights file, and distributing it?

The book has copyright notices, but it copyright 1955. That is 64 years. Perhaps the copyright has expired?
It it had been published after January 1, 1978, the copyright lasts 70 years after the author dies. But prior to that (e.g. 1955) it is complicated.
Or perhaps the copies are illegal.

[Ovyron]

Okay, here's another one.

Same argument.

[AndrewGrant]

It is interesting that you consider Scorpio to be a derivative of Lc0. I strongly suspect that Daniel Shawul would take exception to this description.

He is not alone in his thoughts.

Daniel or the original poster?

If the latter, then you’ve produced a real head scratcher. Is leela chess, as the first to colonize DeepMind’s intellectual territory with c++ (there were earlier alpha zero implementations in python), the only original engine, and all others — whether derived from the alpha zero pseudo code or some other source — are henceforth clones? By that logic, all ab chess engines are just clones of Shannon’s original endgame solver. Whether that’s ridiculous is left as an exercise for the reader.

Any engine using in full or in part the code written by the Leela team is a derivative.

If Scorpio is not a Leela clone, what other explanation do you have for a mid-tier engine with an unreadable code base and a rampant history of crashes, bugs, and other play limiting or preventing issues, suddenly shooting up almost overnight to become one of the most powerful engines featured in TCEC / CCC. I won't make you guess the explanation -- the explanation is that anyone can piggy back off the work of the Leela team and with minimal effort build an engine that is a couple hundred elo weaker than Leela.

This coming from someone who has been riding the stockifsh wave for years taking its working ideas and tuning stuff...what a looser.
No, I don't consider you a cloner, but don't get it to your head that you are super-programmer of some sort while the rest of are stupid mortals.
I have seen many prodigys like you who confuse their programming skills to actual understanding of concepts ... give yourself some 5 years
and you understand eventually expoloring new territores is far more enjoyable/difficult/impactful than "tuning to death" of existing methods, especially
when there is a stream of patches coming from stockfish testing framework, which you "cloned" and renamed Ethereal testing framework apparently.
I would rather well you know try out mcts, nn or something else not my cup of tea.

For years, you have been taunting Scorpio crashing etc when it none of your business, and now that it doesn't crash at all but
it actually crashes Ethereal you are worried. I thought this would be a big lesson for you that when you are trying new stuff
,instead of tuning to death, you are bound to introduce some bugs and it is OK...

Yes I do like to give it to you when Scorpio beats Ethereal given the extra length you go to taunt me (you still do), here is another one for you:

Code: Select all

Scorpio 3.0.4 MCTS+NN Maddex   - Ethereal 11.53 x64 1CPU          35.0 - 15.0    +22/=26/-2    70.00%

I think the "Leela Wave" has given you an inflated sense of self worth. If you knew anything about Ethereal (And you don't) you would understand the difference between the sort of patches that make it into Ethereal and those that make it into Stockfish.

I find it sad that your #1 criticism is this inane phrase "Tuned to death". Firstly, you don't have a clue what goes on in Ethereal. Secondly, I hardly ever tune and in fact I've never tuned the search, only the eval. Thirdly, in my estimation training a NN is the literal definition of "Tuned to death". Its one thing to be a fool, another to be a hypocrite knowingly.

I could not tell you the last time I checked out the SF framework. It is true that OpenBench is made in the vision of Stockfish's fishtest. In fact, it says that RIGHT in the repository. But you made it clear that you don't actually know much about Ethereal so its no surprise you did not know that. In my experience there has only been 1 (ONE) patch that wins for both Stockfish and Ethereal. Its a patch about ProbCut. That I wrote. That I commited to both engines.

If you ever hop down from your high horse and try to understand something instead of parroting the same shallow critisms of others, you might begin to understand things more clearly. The fact that you are naive enough to think engines can just share patches verbatim proves you don't have a damn clue how things work.

EDIT:

And heres some food for thought. OpenBench is a generalized Fishtest that is being used by, in my current knowledge, at least 10 engines that span about 5 programming languages. I wrote a tool that others are using to improve their engines. I could have just LITERALLY cloned Fishtest and used that if I cared. But I wanted to make a contribution.

[Dann Corbit]

Okay, here's another one.

Same argument.

I don't really understand what you are saying. You may notice by examination that each page in the preview says, "Copyrighted material".
Individual numbers are not copyrightable for obvious reasons. But a book of numbers is copyrightable.

Now, mathematics itself is not copyrightable. So, for instance, I cannot find a new calculus formula and copyright it.

A similar thing relates to chess games. A chess game score is not copyrightable. However, a collection of chess games is copyrightable.