Stockfish: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

[Jakob Progsch]

This has already been covered. Stockfish was prominently mentioned in the marketing material.

I guess I don't agree with that being appropriate personally. It's still a weird misrepresentation. They are not selling the "Fat Fritz engine" as claimed, they are selling the Fritz gui with stockfish and some custom numbers. Contributing a tiny fraction to stockfish and then rebranding the product while claiming superiority seems very inappropriate to me. That's like running the last 100m of a marathon length relay and then claiming victory and mentioning the other runners in a footnote.

[connor_mcmonigle]

...he didn’t care if ChessBase’s behavior was technically legal if it went against his conception of correct behavior.

You can even almost ignore the "correctness" thing it just casts doubt about the decision makers most basic competence. If you rely on the work of foss developers and release a product that is overwhelmingly built on their achievement it stands to reason you should give them appropriate credit even if not strictly speaking legally required. Just because you don't want to piss off the people you rely on to do all the heavy lifting for you... for free.

It's just plain stupid behavior, on an institutional level. If no one of the many people that must be in the decision chain raised a red flag about this it speaks volumes about the culture of the company.

This has already been covered. Stockfish was prominently mentioned in the marketing material.

Stockfish wasn't heavily mentioned in the marketing materials, that's just not true. It is mentioned one time, buried in the middle of ChessBase's marketing drivel: "... while learning from the surgical precision of Stockfish’s legendary search". This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

[carldaman]

...he didn’t care if ChessBase’s behavior was technically legal if it went against his conception of correct behavior.

You can even almost ignore the "correctness" thing it just casts doubt about the decision makers most basic competence. If you rely on the work of foss developers and release a product that is overwhelmingly built on their achievement it stands to reason you should give them appropriate credit even if not strictly speaking legally required. Just because you don't want to piss off the people you rely on to do all the heavy lifting for you... for free.

It's just plain stupid behavior, on an institutional level. If no one of the many people that must be in the decision chain raised a red flag about this it speaks volumes about the culture of the company.

This has already been covered. Stockfish was prominently mentioned in the marketing material.

Stockfish wasn't heavily mentioned in the marketing materials, that's just not true. It is mentioned one time, buried in the middle of ChessBase's marketing drivel: "... while learning from the surgical precision of Stockfish’s legendary search". This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

Not to mention Stockfish was referred to as Stocksh in some places, initially.

[gaard]

...he didn’t care if ChessBase’s behavior was technically legal if it went against his conception of correct behavior.

You can even almost ignore the "correctness" thing it just casts doubt about the decision makers most basic competence. If you rely on the work of foss developers and release a product that is overwhelmingly built on their achievement it stands to reason you should give them appropriate credit and fairly represent the product even if not strictly speaking legally required. Just because you don't want to piss off the people you rely on to do all the heavy lifting for you... for free.

It's just plain stupid behavior, on an institutional level. If no one of the many people that must be in the decision chain raised concerns about this it speaks volumes about the culture of the company. Being a software company that disrespects the work of software developers is a really bad look.

I didn't expect them to add the caveat that FF2 is completely superfluous to someone with access to SF development builds, which is everyone, but claiming that FF2 was developed from scratch with the minor admission that FF2 gained from "learning from the surgical precision of Stockfish’s legendary search." is disingenuous at best, when FF2's search is a wholesale copy of SF.

ChessBase never claimed to be interested in advancing computer chess (aside from being able to profit from it), that I know of, but you'd hope we could all agree that they should be held to a higher standard than this.

[dkappe]

Stockfish wasn't heavily mentioned in the marketing materials, that's just not true. It is mentioned one time, buried in the middle of ChessBase's marketing drivel: "... while learning from the surgical precision of Stockfish’s legendary search". This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

Let’s see. That blurb was 4 sentences long and stockfish was mentioned in the second sentence. Interesting idea of “buried” you have. I hope you don’t operate a funeral home.

[connor_mcmonigle]

Stockfish wasn't heavily mentioned in the marketing materials, that's just not true. It is mentioned one time, buried in the middle of ChessBase's marketing drivel: "... while learning from the surgical precision of Stockfish’s legendary search". This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

Let’s see. That blurb was 4 sentences long and stockfish was mentioned in the second sentence. Interesting idea of “buried” you have. I hope you don’t operate a funeral home.

Alrighty. I'll concede that my use of the word "buried" was a bit hyperbolic if you'll concede that your claim that Stockfish is "heavily mentioned" in the marketing material is simply false.

In any case, you've chosen to ignore my primary point:

... This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

[AndrewGrant]

Stockfish wasn't heavily mentioned in the marketing materials, that's just not true. It is mentioned one time, buried in the middle of ChessBase's marketing drivel: "... while learning from the surgical precision of Stockfish’s legendary search". This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

Let’s see. That blurb was 4 sentences long and stockfish was mentioned in the second sentence. Interesting idea of “buried” you have. I hope you don’t operate a funeral home.

Ethereal "[learned] from the surgical precision of Stockfish's legendary search". Would that leave you to believe that Ethereal is a direct fork of Stockfish?

The 24/7 apologist bit is really annoying, Dkappe, and I don't entirely understand why you bother. You don't engage in technical discussion on the forums anymore that I can tell. None of your stances are particularly nuanced or unsurprising once someone gets a vague idea of who you are. It seems to me that your sole purpose is to defend those who have little to no moral compass. Are you not better than that? I don't personally like you, but I don't think you act unethical per-say. You are better than Albert, better than Houdart, better than Norman, better than Chessbase. Why defend their misconduct?

Its a genuine question. And there might be a genuine answer. Maybe you feel obliged to give defense to those who are not putting one forward?

[dkappe]

Ethereal "[learned] from the surgical precision of Stockfish's legendary search". Would that leave you to believe that Ethereal is a direct fork of Stockfish?

The 24/7 apologist bit is really annoying, Dkappe, and I don't entirely understand why you bother. You don't engage in technical discussion on the forums anymore that I can tell. None of your stances are particularly nuanced or unsurprising once someone gets a vague idea of who you are. It seems to me that your sole purpose is to defend those who have little to no moral compass. Are you not better than that? I don't personally like you, but I don't think you act unethical per-say. You are better than Albert, better than Houdart, better than Norman, better than Chessbase. Why defend their misconduct?

Its a genuine question. And there might be a genuine answer. Maybe you feel obliged to give defense to those who are not putting one forward?

You’ve already waved the white flag by calling me an idiot. We don’t need to do this again, do we?

[dkappe]

Alrighty. I'll concede that my use of the word "buried" was a bit hyperbolic if you'll concede that your claim that Stockfish is "heavily mentioned" in the marketing material is simply false.

There’s not that much of it. Here from the description tab:

*The Fat Fritz 2 Chess Engine is based on the software Stockfish. The Fat Fritz 2 Chess Engine and the software Stockfish are licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3. You will receive further information during installation.

So from a small number of sentences Stockfish is mentioned twice. We can have a discussion about these things but not if team Stockfish practices willful misunderstanding.

In any case, you've chosen to ignore my primary point:

... This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

I’m open to this interpretation, but does it really matter? As a legal question, you don’t have to give credit to the developers (see the GPL FAQ site up above). So, if you’re arguing that ChessBase violated the GPL, then, sorry, no. If you are arguing that they are being rude by chess development community standards, then yes, they probably are.

I’d suggest embracing the commercial interests the way that the Linux community has. Get ChessBase to pony up for fishtest, for starters. That ship may have sailed for the moment.

[AndrewGrant]

Alrighty. I'll concede that my use of the word "buried" was a bit hyperbolic if you'll concede that your claim that Stockfish is "heavily mentioned" in the marketing material is simply false.

There’s not that much of it. Here from the description tab:

*The Fat Fritz 2 Chess Engine is based on the software Stockfish. The Fat Fritz 2 Chess Engine and the software Stockfish are licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3. You will receive further information during installation.

So from a small number of sentences Stockfish is mentioned twice. We can have a discussion about these things but not if team Stockfish practices willful misunderstanding.

In any case, you've chosen to ignore my primary point:

... This doesn't make it remotely clear to the customer that what they're actually purchasing is a different network for Stockfish, not an engine. There's definitely nothing resembling credit given to the Stockfish team.

I’m open to this interpretation, but does it really matter? As a legal question, you don’t have to give credit to the developers (see the GPL FAQ site up above). So, if you’re arguing that ChessBase violated the GPL, then, sorry, no. If you are arguing that they are being rude by chess development community standards, then yes, they probably are.

I’d suggest embracing the commercial interests the way that the Linux community has. Get ChessBase to pony up for fishtest, for starters. That ship may have sailed for the moment.

You do understand that those pages were only updated AFTER getting legal notice from Stockfish, right? The explicit mentioning of Stockfish's GPLv3 is an attempt to remedy the violation. You know full and well the original page made no direct associations between Stockfish and FF2.

I defer to my other post which you ignored: Are you not better than this? Stop apologizing for these degenerates.