The Computer Chess Community

[gbtami]

Brendan, don't worry. We are all here due to almost psychiatric reasons, aside being nerds and socially useless persons. The fact that not a single female posts here shows us our real value. Take it easy.

Best comment ever!

[karger]

Don't mess with Brenda n J. Norman , he has moral superiority on his side !

[Leo]

That was funny. Me for example. Likes chess. Wears glasses. No girlfriend. The world needs nerds.

[Leto]

Brendan I find it interesting you claim to have purchased Houdini 5 and a few paragraphs later you trash it. With your belief that it is okay to steal engines because it's up to the programmers to deal with it I wouldn't be surprised if you stole Houdini 5.

[rabbits23]

Brendan : This is clearly one complicated topic with a number of people holding
a wide variety of views on the subject.I don't think there can be any one 'correct" answer but if it's any comfort to you I agree with your line of argument wholeheartedly.
Allan

[MikeB]

This is a rough crowd, rougher than one would expect in a chess forum.
Apparently ego-centric disorders is a worldwide pandemic.

[MikeB]

Brendan, don't worry. We are all here due to almost psychiatric reasons, aside being nerds and socially useless persons. The fact that not a single female posts here shows us our real value. Take it easy.

+1 the best reply posted ....

[BrendanJNorman]

Hi Brendan,

chess programming community is complicated, there are lot of different idea about what is correct or not.

There are a lot of level you should consider, the first one is Legal, and this is related to the copyright laws protecting software.
Then there are ideology about using code from other projects, someone consider good only using idea, someone consider good using also code.

it's not easy at all, and someone is not so polite when arguing about those problems.

sorry, we are not perfect

Thanks my friend.

I understand that there are legal issues related to copyright laws and such things, but as a person who pays for any commercial engine he uses, I also think that if I decide to download a freely available engine, nobody is in a position to judge me.

Particularly since nobody has gone out of their way to educate laymen, non-programmers on something that they so obviously feel so strongly about.

These same people have probably never been this this web page https://www.iprcenter.gov/reports/fact- ... e.pdf/view (one ones like it, or spoken to an attorney about the subject) but prefer to spit venom uselessly online and accomplish nothing instead.

I can think of better things to do with ten years of my life.

Thanks for your sincerity anyway.

[BrendanJNorman]

Although I certainly think you have a point that most engine users are unaware of the legal status of most engine, it was a bit unlucky you tried to make this point in the context of Synapse, which seems to be one of the most blatant examples of criminal software piracy. As I understand from people who have examined it, there is no reverse enginering involved here, just plain copying and relabeling, by people that have made a habit of this. They are like a second-hand car dealer that only offers stolen cars on which he slammed new number plates.

You argue the 'Computer Chess Community' is harsh and uncivilized in their judgement (to summarize your long original post in my own words), but I think you could expect similar responses on a forum for car buyers, when in response to someone that had stated "I don't care if the car I buy is stolen, as long as it has comfortable seats and does many miles to the gallon", you would suggest that this is an acceptable attitude from the perspective of a car buyer. Especially if many of the prople on that forum were looking for a car because their previous one had just been stolen.

Buying from a known fence is something entirely different from buying products from manufacturers that are involved in litigation on alleged infrigement of each other's patents. And there is no harm in warning people against known fences, to prevent them from unwittingly supporting crime.

Thanks.

I don't think the car dealership analogy is very fitting.

There's a difference between a car and a 2 MB binary file. I have never met a person who bought a stolen car, or a stolen engine for that matter.

All I asked was that what is "stolen" and what is not stolen is made clear (if you expect to enjoy the privilege attacking those who use "stolen" engines).

Probably 8/10 of 3000+ engines have borrowed ideas from other engines to varying extents and expecting others to know which you've given a "PASS" to is arrogant.

[BrendanJNorman]

Brendan, don't worry. We are all here due to almost psychiatric reasons, aside being nerds and socially useless persons. The fact that not a single female posts here shows us our real value. Take it easy.

Thanks Kai, this is brilliant insight. I'll take it into account.