Now if someone else has written some kind of copywright laws, ie GPL and think they can overpower the US Government I have news for them.
It won't float at least in the United States.
You do not understand at all what GPL is. It is not an alternative to copyright. It is a license agreement governing use of code, which is generally also copyrighted. So you can have both.
Nor did I mean to imply there is some kind of get out of jail free card for misuse of code. You misuse it at your own risk. But there's a standard of proof for misuse, and there are also standards for awarding damages. Some cases fail to meet one or both standards.
rhollay wrote:
1. There are many books, e-books about programming with examples, free code snippets for everyone, tutorials, other publications on internet,
even open-source programs not under GPL, so that everybody who reads them can copy-past several hundreds of lines of code very easily.
I suppose there are such publications about chess programming also...
Actually there is not. But even with books, this is uncommon. I teach a course in network programming using the Stevens book "Unix Network Programming" which has all kinds of code in it, yet I do not get duplicate programs, or even close to duplicate blocks of code turned in.
Your students know very well they wouldn't pass the exam if they just copied code from the book .
But in practice it's often easier to just paste-in some free code fragment into the program.
E.g. I did often put some free php or javascript code into my web-based applications.
Anyway, I understand your standpoint. Chess programming is somewhat different, the characteristic parts of the programs,
like search, eval, etc. matter when hunting for clones.
Bill Rogers wrote:Being totally unaware about GPL but knowing Copywright matters I would like to make the following information.
I worked in Silicon Valley for 15 years for a large software company. They wrote an accounting package that would run city and countys all over the US and in fact did do just that. Their package cost upwards of $50,000.00 depending on how many modules and how many users you wanted to be able to be on line at the same time.
We did on one occasion sue another software company for piracey. They just changed the front end of our package and claimed that it was their own. The FBI put them out of business.
The Copywright laws of the US simpley state that if over 10% of the code in a preticular piece of software has been change then it is considered a new work. This does not mean just changing variables or name of subroutines, etc., it means altering the original works by either adding 10% more code or deleting some code and changing at least 10% of the remaining code.
Now if someone else has written some kind of copywright laws, ie GPL and think they can overpower the US Government I have news for them.
It won't float at least in the United States.
Bill
I do not believe that 10% is in the copyright law. I have seen several copyright cases. Do you actually think you could copy a book of 10 chapters and just rewrite one and sell it as your own? We have had copyright briefings multiple times to explain the dos and don'ts of software development. I just looked at sections 106-121 of the US copyright law, online at the US Copyright Office, and it is quite clear that the original author retains copyright on the original work or any derivatives of that work. This latter seems to be on point. Nowhere could I find any reference to 10% new additions or any such reference, and indeed have never heard that discussed by any copyright/patent attorney in the briefings I have had.
rhollay wrote:
1. There are many books, e-books about programming with examples, free code snippets for everyone, tutorials, other publications on internet,
even open-source programs not under GPL, so that everybody who reads them can copy-past several hundreds of lines of code very easily.
I suppose there are such publications about chess programming also...
Actually there is not. But even with books, this is uncommon. I teach a course in network programming using the Stevens book "Unix Network Programming" which has all kinds of code in it, yet I do not get duplicate programs, or even close to duplicate blocks of code turned in.
Your students know very well they wouldn't pass the exam if they just copied code from the book .
But in practice it's often easier to just paste-in some free code fragment into the program.
E.g. I did often put some free php or javascript code into my web-based applications.
Anyway, I understand your standpoint. Chess programming is somewhat different, the characteristic parts of the programs,
like search, eval, etc. matter when hunting for clones.
correct as far as I am concerned, although the GPL is not so forgiving. I don't mind that some borrow code that is not related to how you play the game. Move input and output is pretty standard, and sharing that code doesn't (to me) pose an issue (it does for GPL code of course). Ditto for EGTB code, or anything that fits the classic definition f(x) = { e1, e2, ..., en }, that is a function, that for a given input (x), you get a constant set of e's for output. Move generation. Move input. Move output. Endgame table lookup. Random number generator. hash signature generation. That relationship does not hold true for things like evaluation, or search, etc... I only care about the actual "engine" code, but the GPL is more precise.
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