Vas did contribute!

[Michael Sherwin]

Everywhere I read, 'Vas only took and did not give anything in return'.

This is just simply not true!!

.

You should never "pick up" only what you like, like Vas. You should look at the spirit of my original message, as Vas should have looked at the original spirit of the open source idea.

Now, what was the "spirit of my original message"?

He never contributed by disseminating ideas which was the original idea of open sorce programs. His contribution is limited on his final product, the strongest engine befere the coming of Ippolit-RobboLito.

Before Rybka 1.0 beta was released Vas openly wrote about material balance tables and many other idea's that made it into Rybka 1.0 beta. He always said what it is that he was doing and he did exactly what he said he was doing. He disseminated his ideas! Just not in form of open source. I see nothing wrong with what he did.

When Fabien released the source of Fruit to the public, because it was the strongest engine at the time, it became the 'base line engine' for others to study and lean from in order to create even stronger programs. Even Bob eventually studied ideas in Fruit before Crafty was able to surpass it. It is my hope that there is a stronger than Fruit 2.1 engine out there somewhere that has not benefited from Fruit's sources. Can anyone claim or name one?

Now right or wrong Ipp's/Rob's sources are out and if a few authors will learn from these sources then all authors have the right to learn from them. If not, then let all the 'honest' authors just give up and quit and leave the hobby to the 'dishonest'.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

...
Cool,so we can at least hope to see a frankenstein Linux operation system based on Windows 7

Sure: Ubuntu 04/10 Loony Lunatic.

[bob]

Vas clearly contributed to open source even if it was not his intention.

I am not an english native speaker, so perhaps my following comment is wrong.

But for what I understand "contribution" is something unavoidably linked to the wish of doing so.

From english on-line dictionary, for the word "contribution"

- "the part played by a person in bringing about a result"

- "a voluntary gift (as of money or service or ideas) made to some worthwhile cause"

- "act of giving in common with others for a common purpose especially to a charity"


So I don't see _any_ contribution at all in this case because there is the lack of the essential ingredient of "voluntarity"

It is like if someone steal my car. I have not contributed to the thief healty for this action. Nor I would like to do so.

I agree. the concept is somewhat like "You stole my car, but I did learn something by watching how you stole it and how you have used it since..."

Many have contributed. A few have not. That's just the way things work. My hat's off to those that do make good ideas public. Or that make suggestions that are sometimes not very good, but occasionally produce nice results. Contributing something bad is still contributing if it is done with good intentions, and we have a _lot_ of people with good intentions. That's why everything I am doing continues to be made public as we release new versions. Secrecy stifles more than anything.

[bob]

Vas clearly contributed to open source even if it was not his intention.

I am not an english native speaker, so perhaps my following comment is wrong.

But for what I understand "contribution" is something unavoidably linked to the wish of doing so.

From english on-line dictionary, for the word "contribution"

- "the part played by a person in bringing about a result"

- "a voluntary gift (as of money or service or ideas) made to some worthwhile cause"

- "act of giving in common with others for a common purpose especially to a charity"


So I don't see _any_ contribution at all in this case because there is the lack of the essential ingredient of "voluntarity"

It is like if someone steal my car. I have not contributed to the thief healty for this action. Nor I would like to do so.

1)I am also not a native english speaker so it is possible that you are right.

I still see a difference relative to the case of stealing a car.

Ideas are not protected and prograqmmers can expect other programmers to discover ideas by reverse engineering so every programmer of top program take a significant risk that people are going to discover his ideas.

With cars it is not the same and not every person who has a car take a significant risk that people are going to steal his car.

2)I am also against the word stealing when we talk about author rights because I feel the things are not the same.

There are significant number of people who do not justify stealing a car but justify doing something against the author rights.

It is clear to me that if we have a new rule that stealing is allowed then the situation is going to be very bad for us.

I am not sure if the situation in the world is going to be worse in case of a new rule that there are no author rights.

I can clearly see possible gains
For example people may release free source of better programs when today they are afraid to do it because they know it is against the author rights and it is not only in chess.

Maybe it is better if somebody release some better windows that is based on the existing windows of microsoft when microsoft cannot sue him by claiming that he does not have the author rights.

I am not supporting acting against the rules and doing it today but at least it is not clear to me that changing the rule is a bad idea when it is clear to me that changing the rule and allowing everybody to steal is a bad idea.

Uri

I think the basic idea is covered by common sense as well as black-letter law. Copying someone else's work is plagiarism unless you have permission. It is pointless to debate what was "copied" with the primary commercial program being discussed. Copying ideas from others is generally OK, copying code is not. And there was _clear_ copying done. How much is irrelevant. But most don't seem to care because the program is so strong. I don't care because I am working on my own program and am _not_ copying a single line from anyone else. There is probably some middle-ground that is acceptable, such as the EGTB code, or things that have one correct output for a given input, like hashing, or repetition detection, or even a move generator (since the rules of chess are quite tightly defined). Evaluatoin is different since there is no one "right answer" for chess positions. And then there is the issue of copyright and/or open-source license agreements that have to be honored with respect to my "some copying might be acceptable" comments above.

But in no way is the idea of copying someone else's code, and someone else's ideas, and then selling a commercial program from the project in any way construed as "contributing" anything. That concept is a grossly twisted use of the word "contribute".

[bob]

I disagree
Vas clearly contributed to open source even if it was not his intention.
Uri

Nonsense.
In that sense every piece of any commercial, closed source program (even Windows 7) contribute to open source, because everything can be decompiled or disassembled....

No you are wrong.
What Uri says is that Rybka has been reversed engineered so Vas has contributed to open source. Windows 7 haven't been reversed engineered so they have not contributed to open source.

contribution - act of giving in common with others for a common purpose

This topic is _not_ about any kind of contribution that meets any accepted definition or use of the word.

[bob]

Everywhere I read, 'Vas only took and did not give anything in return'.

This is just simply not true!!

.

You should never "pick up" only what you like, like Vas. You should look at the spirit of my original message, as Vas should have looked at the original spirit of the open source idea.

Now, what was the "spirit of my original message"?

He never contributed by disseminating ideas which was the original idea of open sorce programs. His contribution is limited on his final product, the strongest engine befere the coming of Ippolit-RobboLito.

Before Rybka 1.0 beta was released Vas openly wrote about material balance tables and many other idea's that made it into Rybka 1.0 beta. He always said what it is that he was doing and he did exactly what he said he was doing. He disseminated his ideas! Just not in form of open source. I see nothing wrong with what he did.

When Fabien released the source of Fruit to the public, because it was the strongest engine at the time, it became the 'base line engine' for others to study and lean from in order to create even stronger programs. Even Bob eventually studied ideas in Fruit before Crafty was able to surpass it. It is my hope that there is a stronger than Fruit 2.1 engine out there somewhere that has not benefited from Fruit's sources. Can anyone claim or name one?

Now right or wrong Ipp's/Rob's sources are out and if a few authors will learn from these sources then all authors have the right to learn from them. If not, then let all the 'honest' authors just give up and quit and leave the hobby to the 'dishonest'.

First, you have the cart before the horse. I use one idea that was in fruit. Reductions. They were around _way_ before Fruit. _way_ before. You can find discussions between myself and Bruce Moreland on this very subject in 1996. If you look at what is in Crafty, and what is in Fruit, you will find that 90% of the ideas in Fruit were in Crafty 8-10 years before fruit existed. null-move. hashing. extensions. move ordering ideas. Etc. I am not aware of _any_ idea from fruit that is in Crafty of today. I certainly tried Fruit's "history pruning" but discovered it was worthless and moved on. Granted the (apparent) major effect Fruit had (exactly the same effect I saw when I released Crafty for the first time in 1995) was that some will copy and then modify. Including Rybka 1 based on analysis already done with respect to fruit. That was not the intent, but it was a result that probably could have been predicted.

As far as someone quitting because a new and strong program is out, and/or the source is available, let 'em quit. Copying code is not what drives me. Ippolit has been around for months. I've not bothered with it other than to try to use it as a strong opponent on my cluster until I realized it had more bugs than a $2.00 hotel room. Writing a competitive chess program is quite a daunting task. What with sophisticated search, speed requirements, complex evaluation terms, parallel search, etc, it is not a short-term project and doesn't need short-term people. The "copiers" will remain "flash-in-the-pan" types that claim credit for a bit, then disappear into the sunset. The true devotees of computer chess will continue to develop programs just as we have been doing since the 60's. I don't care if _everybody_ quits. I'll continue until I lose interest all by myself. Nothing someone else can do will cause me to lose interest.

[schlucke]

I am not aware of _any_ idea from fruit that is in Crafty of today. I certainly tried ...

At least you are fair and give the source of the idea, othes are not!

Code: Select all

 *   22.2    We are now back to using POSIX threads, since all current Linux   *
 *           distributions now use the posix-conforming NTPL implementation    *
 *           which should eliminate the various compatibility issues that      *
 *           caused problems in the past.  This also should make the new       *
 *           smpnice mode work correctly for Linux and Windows since they will *
 *           now both use threads for the SMP search.  Fruit-like scoring      *
 *           (interpolation between mg and eg scores) fully implemented.  AEL  *
 *           pruning (Heinz 2000) also fully implemented (we had razoring and  *
 *           futility, but not extended futility).  "Eval" command has been    *
 *           removed and combined with the "personality" command so that eval  *
 *           parameters can be modified, in addition to some search parameters *
 *           that also belong in the personality data.  Mate threat extension  *
 *           and one legal reply to check extensions have been removed.  Tests *
 *           proved them to be absolutely useless, over 30,000 games for each  *
 *           test showed no gain and sometimes a loss in playing strength with *
 *           them so we followed the "simple is better" and removed them.  The *
 *           fractional ply code was also removed since the only extension we  *
 *           now use is the "give check" extension which is a whole ply.  A    *
 *           significant number of evaluation parameters have been changed,    *
 *           a few even removed as cluster testing helped us find optimal      *
 *           values.  There are a few new terms, with more planned.            *

[michiguel]

Everywhere I read, 'Vas only took and did not give anything in return'.

This is just simply not true!!

.

You should never "pick up" only what you like, like Vas. You should look at the spirit of my original message, as Vas should have looked at the original spirit of the open source idea.

Now, what was the "spirit of my original message"?

He never contributed by disseminating ideas which was the original idea of open sorce programs. His contribution is limited on his final product, the strongest engine befere the coming of Ippolit-RobboLito.

Before Rybka 1.0 beta was released Vas openly wrote about material balance tables and many other idea's that made it into Rybka 1.0 beta. He always said what it is that he was doing and he did exactly what he said he was doing. He disseminated his ideas! Just not in form of open source. I see nothing wrong with what he did.

When Fabien released the source of Fruit to the public, because it was the strongest engine at the time, it became the 'base line engine' for others to study and lean from in order to create even stronger programs. Even Bob eventually studied ideas in Fruit before Crafty was able to surpass it. It is my hope that there is a stronger than Fruit 2.1 engine out there somewhere that has not benefited from Fruit's sources. Can anyone claim or name one?

Gaviota 0.74!
no wait... it surpassed Fruit 1.0, sorry, wrong version

Miguel

Now right or wrong Ipp's/Rob's sources are out and if a few authors will learn from these sources then all authors have the right to learn from them. If not, then let all the 'honest' authors just give up and quit and leave the hobby to the 'dishonest'.

[adieguez]

And Amyan 3! way into the future..

Gaviota has surpassed Fruit 1.0? maybe am wrong, I remember even the first version of Fruit was very strong, or not?

When Fabien released the source of Fruit to the public, because it was the strongest engine at the time, it became the 'base line engine' for others to study and lean from in order to create even stronger programs. Even Bob eventually studied ideas in Fruit before Crafty was able to surpass it. It is my hope that there is a stronger than Fruit 2.1 engine out there somewhere that has not benefited from Fruit's sources. Can anyone claim or name one?

Gaviota 0.74!
no wait... it surpassed Fruit 1.0, sorry, wrong version

Miguel

[Uri Blass]

<snipped>

And Amyan 3! way into the future..

Gaviota has surpassed Fruit 1.0? maybe am wrong, I remember even the first version of Fruit was very strong, or not?

I do not know what you define as very strong but

Fruit1.0 is 308 elo weaker than fruit2.1

http://www.fruitchess.com/playing-strength.htm