Previous World Champion Engine Authors Speak Out...

[benstoker]

Cloning has no legal meaning with respect to US copyright law.

Yes, that's a real quote, and it shows how desperate the Rybka folks have gotten.

Clone is used in chess circles in a different way than in software generally. For instance, Open Office is considered a clone of Microsoft Office, but with no (I hope) copying of code.

Correct. Just a ton of reverse-engineering so that a .doc or .xls file will produce the same results using either microsoft office or open office. And apparently that has passed all the "legal checks and balances". But it does not make that OK if you tried to enter openoffice in an ICGA chess tournament. It is still a clone / derivative (in this case really a clone intended to be identical in all ways, but without using the original source, instead produced by inspection of the binary, + the .doc files to see what the mark-up looks like).

Wait a minute. The Openoffice people never had access to the Word source code. All they did was discover the ideas via RE, and then literally wrote from ground up an original program. It's Original with a capital O and should be allowed to play in all chess tournaments.

Not so clear. One can reverse engineer by taking known input and observing output. Or can take a binary and disassemble and study that instead. If you disassemble to obtain ideas, I think it is perfectly legal. If you disassemble and the copy verbatim what you found, then that is a form of cloning, or else is a derivative if you make some changes...

You know what? Chess Engine Metaphysics sucks. The nihilists are winning.

[bob]

Cloning has no legal meaning with respect to US copyright law.

Yes, that's a real quote, and it shows how desperate the Rybka folks have gotten.

Clone is used in chess circles in a different way than in software generally. For instance, Open Office is considered a clone of Microsoft Office, but with no (I hope) copying of code.

Correct. Just a ton of reverse-engineering so that a .doc or .xls file will produce the same results using either microsoft office or open office. And apparently that has passed all the "legal checks and balances". But it does not make that OK if you tried to enter openoffice in an ICGA chess tournament. It is still a clone / derivative (in this case really a clone intended to be identical in all ways, but without using the original source, instead produced by inspection of the binary, + the .doc files to see what the mark-up looks like).

Wait a minute. The Openoffice people never had access to the Word source code. All they did was discover the ideas via RE, and then literally wrote from ground up an original program. It's Original with a capital O and should be allowed to play in all chess tournaments.

Not so clear. One can reverse engineer by taking known input and observing output. Or can take a binary and disassemble and study that instead. If you disassemble to obtain ideas, I think it is perfectly legal. If you disassemble and the copy verbatim what you found, then that is a form of cloning, or else is a derivative if you make some changes...

You know what? Chess Engine Metaphysics sucks. The nihilists are winning.

[Tom Barrister]

Last night, I emailed friends of mine who work for Microsoft and Sun, informing them that they had been permitted to enter Office and Open-Office, respectively, into computer chess tournaments.

The woman from Microsoft suggested that I take a long vacation.

The man from Sun asked me if he could buy some of whatever I was using.

I doubt that either program will be entered into the next world championship.

However, if either company did decide to produce a chess engine:

The Microsoft Chess Engine would cost $199, be released full of bugs, have 30 updates in the next year (25 of them security-related), and play at ELO 1400.

The Sun Chess Engine would be free, have virtually no bugs, require few updates, and play at ELO 2500.

[bhlangonijr]

Cloning has no legal meaning with respect to US copyright law.

Yes, that's a real quote, and it shows how desperate the Rybka folks have gotten.

Clone is used in chess circles in a different way than in software generally. For instance, Open Office is considered a clone of Microsoft Office, but with no (I hope) copying of code.

Correct. Just a ton of reverse-engineering so that a .doc or .xls file will produce the same results using either microsoft office or open office. And apparently that has passed all the "legal checks and balances". But it does not make that OK if you tried to enter openoffice in an ICGA chess tournament. It is still a clone / derivative (in this case really a clone intended to be identical in all ways, but without using the original source, instead produced by inspection of the binary, + the .doc files to see what the mark-up looks like).

Comparing OpenOffice with clones in CC's world is silly, at best. OpenOffice is a totally original set of programs that implements the same functionalities as MS Office does. The term "MS Office clone" is used functionality-wise, not in respect to the source code as it is often used in CC's world. Maybe you should try to see .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc such as a protocol. There are many implementations of a given protocol without making of it a cloning issue.

[bob]

Cloning has no legal meaning with respect to US copyright law.

Yes, that's a real quote, and it shows how desperate the Rybka folks have gotten.

Clone is used in chess circles in a different way than in software generally. For instance, Open Office is considered a clone of Microsoft Office, but with no (I hope) copying of code.

Correct. Just a ton of reverse-engineering so that a .doc or .xls file will produce the same results using either microsoft office or open office. And apparently that has passed all the "legal checks and balances". But it does not make that OK if you tried to enter openoffice in an ICGA chess tournament. It is still a clone / derivative (in this case really a clone intended to be identical in all ways, but without using the original source, instead produced by inspection of the binary, + the .doc files to see what the mark-up looks like).

Comparing OpenOffice with clones in CC's world is silly, at best. OpenOffice is a totally original set of programs that implements the same functionalities as MS Office does. The term "MS Office clone" is used functionality-wise, not in respect to the source code as it is often used in CC's world. Maybe you should try to see .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc such as a protocol. There are many implementations of a given protocol without making of it a cloning issue.

The point was that open office is _often_ referred to as an MS office clone. Done in the right way (RE from the markup language back to a program that will correctly produce the right output given that markup language. For example, early RE issues between intel and zilog involved reverse engineering. But by taking a single X86 instruction, executing it, then looking at everything that was changed (that was visible) including flags, registers, memory, etc.

The other type of RE involves looking at the binary, converting that to asm, converting that to C. That's still copying.

But both are commonly referred to as reverse engineering, and cloning. For computer chess, one way would be acceptable, the other way not ok.