Derivatives are real programs too

[kranium]

I believe programs like Toga, Cyclone, StockFish, etc. should be recognized as legitimate engines and allowed entrance into major tournaments.

These 'derivatives' are not the same as 'clones' (which can easily be produced by hacking the original executable with with a hex editor, or simply re-compiling a new executable from source), due to the fact that they often contain enhancements, new ideas, and many hundreds of new lines of code, and are often largely re-written.

I know that Toga recently played in the world championship... I congratulate the tournament organizers for a more liberal and open-minded stance on the issue.

It would be benficial if the chess community (and tournament organizers) stop taking such a narrow view of what constitutes a legitimate engine and what does not...

IMHO, there's no good reason to 'blacklist' derivatives just because the author didn't reinvent the wheel, and started from a known source. That's progress...every tech advance stands on the shoulders of those before them.

a hacked executable, or a derivative where the only change is the name of the program, etc. is clearly not what I'm talking about here, that's different.

I'm expressing my opinion here, because I was just refused entry into the Pan American...apparently fruit derivatives are 'clone's.

Sincerely,
Norm

[michiguel]

I believe programs like Toga, Cyclone, StockFish, etc. should be recognized as legitimate engines and allowed entrance into major tournaments.

These 'derivatives' are not the same as 'clones' (which can easily be produced by hacking the original executable with with a hex editor, or simply re-compiling a new executable from source), due to the fact that they often contain enhancements, new ideas, and many hundreds of new lines of code, and are often largely re-written.

I know that Toga recently played in the world championship... I congratulate the tournament organizers for a more liberal and open-minded stance on the issue.

It would be benficial if the chess community (and tournament organizers) stop taking such a narrow view of what constitutes a legitimate engine and what does not...

IMHO, there's no good reason to 'blacklist' derivatives just because the author didn't reinvent the wheel, and started from a known source. That's progress...every tech advance stands on the shoulders of those before them.

a hacked executable, or a derivative where the only change is the name of the program, etc. is clearly not what I'm talking about here, that's different.

I'm expressing my opinion here, because I was just refused entry into the Pan American...apparently fruit derivatives are 'clone's.

Sincerely,
Norm

It is not a matter of how you got the program or how you label it. It is a matter of how many entries an author can have (only one). A derivative, by definition, shares authorship with with the original. So, if "Fruit" (i.e. Fabien) decides to enter in a tournament, Toga should not be allowed at all.

Miguel

[kranium]

yes, i undertand, but it doesn't make sense to me...Toga, and other derivatives are subtantially stronger than even the newest Fruit...
i.e. big progress has been made...but organizers and the chess community refuse to legitimize it, or even recognize it ?

Toga has reached 3000 ELO! but is no good? how will we ever catch Rybka?

[Graham Banks]

yes, i undertand, but it doesn't make sense to me...Toga, and other derivatives are subtantially stronger than even the newest Fruit...
i.e. big progress has been made...but organizers and the chess community refuse to legitimize it, or even recognize it ?

Toga has reached 3000 ELO! but is no good? how will we ever catch Rybka?

Interesting really, because cover versions of songs get legitimately recognised as hits in their own right. Nobody says they can't attain number one status in the charts because the artist didn't originally write the song. They're even eligible for awards.

[Dann Corbit]

I believe programs like Toga, Cyclone, StockFish, etc. should be recognized as legitimate engines and allowed entrance into major tournaments.

These 'derivatives' are not the same as 'clones' (which can easily be produced by hacking the original executable with with a hex editor, or simply re-compiling a new executable from source), due to the fact that they often contain enhancements, new ideas, and many hundreds of new lines of code, and are often largely re-written.

I know that Toga recently played in the world championship... I congratulate the tournament organizers for a more liberal and open-minded stance on the issue.

It would be benficial if the chess community (and tournament organizers) stop taking such a narrow view of what constitutes a legitimate engine and what does not...

IMHO, there's no good reason to 'blacklist' derivatives just because the author didn't reinvent the wheel, and started from a known source. That's progress...every tech advance stands on the shoulders of those before them.

a hacked executable, or a derivative where the only change is the name of the program, etc. is clearly not what I'm talking about here, that's different.

I'm expressing my opinion here, because I was just refused entry into the Pan American...apparently fruit derivatives are 'clone's.

Sincerely,
Norm

Suppose I grab a copy of open source Fruit or Glaurung and then change Fabian or Tord's name for mine and then call the engine "RevengeOfTheClones".

Now I enter in a contest and compete with Fruit or Glaurung. Will you be happy if you are Tord or Fabian?

I agree that the clones are fully legitimate. However, the single auther for a contest rule also makes sense. On the other hand, I would like to see chess testing institutions like CCRL, SSDF and CEGT test all variants that they have time for.

IMO-YMMV

[Dann Corbit]

I believe programs like Toga, Cyclone, StockFish, etc. should be recognized as legitimate engines and allowed entrance into major tournaments.

These 'derivatives' are not the same as 'clones' (which can easily be produced by hacking the original executable with with a hex editor, or simply re-compiling a new executable from source), due to the fact that they often contain enhancements, new ideas, and many hundreds of new lines of code, and are often largely re-written.

I know that Toga recently played in the world championship... I congratulate the tournament organizers for a more liberal and open-minded stance on the issue.

It would be benficial if the chess community (and tournament organizers) stop taking such a narrow view of what constitutes a legitimate engine and what does not...

IMHO, there's no good reason to 'blacklist' derivatives just because the author didn't reinvent the wheel, and started from a known source. That's progress...every tech advance stands on the shoulders of those before them.

a hacked executable, or a derivative where the only change is the name of the program, etc. is clearly not what I'm talking about here, that's different.

I'm expressing my opinion here, because I was just refused entry into the Pan American...apparently fruit derivatives are 'clone's.

Sincerely,
Norm

Suppose I grab a copy of open source Fruit or Glaurung and then change Fabian or Tord's name for mine and then call the engine "RevengeOfTheClones".

Now I enter in a contest and compete with Fruit or Glaurung. Will you be happy if you are Tord or Fabian?

I agree that the clones are fully legitimate. However, the single auther for a contest rule also makes sense. On the other hand, I would like to see chess testing institutions like CCRL, SSDF and CEGT test all variants that they have time for.

IMO-YMMV

I would like to temper my answer:
If the "parent author" has no objections, then I think that the offshoot should be allowed.

There is (of course) also much innovation in the clones of existing chess projects and I just offered my extreme example to show why the rules exist.

[ilari]

This is going to ruffle some feathers here for sure. As the author of a chess engine with borrowed code I'm glad that derivatives are included on most online rating lists, but it wouldn't be fair to let them compete in tournaments.

If the "parent author" has no objections, then I think that the offshoot should be allowed.

Agreed. But then the parent author shouldn't be allowed to compete, to make sure that there's only one version of the engine in the tournament.

[michiguel]

This is going to ruffle some feathers here for sure. As the author of a chess engine with borrowed code I'm glad that derivatives are included on most online rating lists, but it wouldn't be fair to let them compete in tournaments.

If the "parent author" has no objections, then I think that the offshoot should be allowed.

Agreed. But then the parent author shouldn't be allowed to compete, to make sure that there's only one version of the engine in the tournament.

Exactly.

Otherwise, if that would be allowed, another programmer can enter 10 slightly modified copies of his/her program increasing the chances to win. Competitions are not contest between programs, they are contest between programmers or team of programmers.

Testing is a different thing.

Miguel

[Michel]

<rant>
Unfortunately there is a big chaos in the derivatives world. I have not seen this in any other open source project. What makes chess programmers different?

For Fruit there are at least the following major derivatives that I know of

GambitFruit, Cyclone, Cyclops, GrapeFruit, Toga II 3.1.2SE, Toga II 1.3.4, Toga II 1.4b5c, Toga 1.4.1SE, Toga 1.4.2JD, Toga 1.4.3JD(secret betas), DeepLearningToga

Mind you these programs usually released without any changelog, except for a short readme saying that they are "much faster", or "much improved" or something to that effect. Sometimes they only contain cosmetic changes like the ability to detect the number of processors, or something like that. At other times major functionality is removed without any consultation. I was especially shocked by the decision of the Toga developers to abandon Linux compatibility, given that Fabien Letouzey went to such great pain to release a cross platform engine.

I am sure Cyclone is a great engine and contains genuine improvements (I noticed some in my testing). But going through the source code I noticed the following.

(1) The source has been reformatted and variables names are all in lower case. It looks a lot nicer now but it would also be much harder to merge with Toga again.

(2) All ASSERTS were removed from the code. I considered them great for debugging.

(3) I think the opening book functionality was removed. Personally I think this is a good idea. But if Cyclone is successful someone is bound to reimplement it, touting it as a "big improvement".

(4) Many constants were substituted directly in the source it seems. This is something the compiler would do anyway. And it would be hard to back out of this change.

(5) Some filenames were changed for unclear reasons. For example protocol.cpp became interface.cpp, posix.cpp became input.cpp, search_full.cpp became search_root.cpp.

Again this is not a criticism of Cyclone but an indication of how the development process seems to happen in the derivatives world.

</rant>

[Omega-three]

Interesting really, because cover versions of songs get legitimately recognised as hits in their own right. Nobody says they can't attain number one status in the charts because the artist didn't originally write the song. They're even eligible for awards.

However the artist nearly always calls the song by the same name rather than something completely different. It may be psychological but I look at derivatives in a negative way because they hide the name of the original program in a read me file somewhere. For example why not call toga 'Fruit 2.1/Toga x' or Cyclone 'Fruit 2.1/Toga X/Cyclone X etc

Just my 2 penneth worth