Where is the evidence to be found?

[chrisw]

I don't think it's strange at all. Chris demanded from Zach to present the 'proof' in such a way that it would convince an 'average' ( if not all ) member. This is no simple task. I think for most members ( including myself ) an assembler to random bible texts translation makes as much sense as an assembler to C translation. So probably more needs to be done. I don't even think the request from Chris to Zach was fair, but at least it's strange while the request was coming from him, he's now acting like a child one week before Christmas.

Well, I think I am simply asking those who continue with the allegations even before Zach has produced anything to provide the evidence. If Zach is producing stuff then it perhaps behoves the accusers to wait until he's done so. It would certainly have been wise for them to have waited for evidence before opening any of these threads imo.

Accuse first, hunt for the evidence later does seem the wrong way round. Doesn't it?

[Albert Silver]

Why don't you give them some time to produce the results of their research, instead of flaming the results before they are produced?

Well, considering they have started threads, and produced hundreds of posts on the matter, it seems strange to me to be asked to now wait for the results to be produced. What were the claims based on? The number of letters in the name?

Furthermore, the evidence presented will have to show that it is what helps Fruit play as well as it does, and this is also what helps Rybka play as well as it does. Otherwise, the evidence really wouldn't be any better than identical UCI protocols.

Albert

What _is_ the intent here. To deflect attention elsewhere once more? The evidence does _not_ have to show that is what helps fruit do anything. It only has to show that fruit was copied. Where are you trying to go with this? The goal of the two original investigators here was to simply answer the question "was rybka derived from fruit?" why is it necessary to have a continually shifting target and why do others get to dictate what Zach and Christophe were trying to answer?

Quite simply, copying _any part_ of a GPL program is not permissable. _any part_. Not just "key parts".

I'm not deflecting attention from anything.

The initial accusations stemmed from Rybka's astonishing evolution, thus foul play had to be behind it. You and others have accused other programs of this in the past, and gotten egg in the face for it. The secret to this evolution would supposedly be because it borrowed heavily from Fruit. Vas couldn't possibly have done this on his own, he must have borrowed hundreds of Elo worth of info from Fruit.

If you spend hours and hours, and then show that it has code that is as useless to its playing ability as UCI code, well, you may theoretically have a case, I couldn't say, but you and your reputation will still get egg in the face.

My 2 cents.

As to actual code copying, I haven't seen any allusion to it, only claims of potentially suspicious similarities.

Albert

[chrisw]

We're talking of chess engines, so we're not interested in the UCI part of the program,

It is nearly impossible to compare an open source code with an executeable, so it is a good way to compare the engineoutput in general to see if there is a work based on another engine.

It's not up to you to decide what kind of profes are enough, everyone should draw his own conclusion.

Fabien is not interested, so I am not interested too. I just show the similaries.

Many people are not interested in this issue, they got a monster engine and everything is fine. Of course Rybka is a great piece of work, very different to Fruit in many areas.

The only question is, did Vas take some help at start with his great new ideas in chessprogramming, if so, it was not within the GPL and illegal. And it don't matter if now every single line in Rybka is different to Fruit, or only the UCI I/O was taken from Fruit.

ANd we have two independent analysis that it is at least possible.

ok, I agree entirely it's not up to me to decide what is proof and what not. Although, this case works on two levels, the icga tourney coming up and also any legal situation. For the icga tourney I would guess (strongly) that UCI issues will be considered not relevent, it's only engine similarities that affect. Legally it's arguable that the UCI is just as important as the engine vis a vis the GPL. In terms of computer chess in general, I suspect people would be concerned more about engine copying than UCI side copying.

[henkf]

[quote="chrisw

Accuse first, hunt for the evidence later does seem the wrong way round. Doesn't it?[/quote]

It does, however i don't think it's wrong when suspection, looking for clues and even discussion with peers comes before this.

[Alexander Schmidt]

I think UCI side and Engine side copying would probably happen both at once.

I made many analysis with Rybka 1.0 Beta looking for similaries in the search, movegen, evaluation and so on. You wouldn't believe how many things you can test with special positions. I found no other suspicious similaries than the UCI output. So Rybka looks different to Fruit regarding it's playing. I only found a few strange positions where one could believe, the eval is somehow messed up to hide similaries, for example this one:

8/1k6/1b6/8/8/8/1K6/8 b - - 0 1

kb vs. k with positive score for the king.

[bob]

Why don't you give them some time to produce the results of their research, instead of flaming the results before they are produced?

Well, considering they have started threads, and produced hundreds of posts on the matter, it seems strange to me to be asked to now wait for the results to be produced. What were the claims based on? The number of letters in the name?

Furthermore, the evidence presented will have to show that it is what helps Fruit play as well as it does, and this is also what helps Rybka play as well as it does. Otherwise, the evidence really wouldn't be any better than identical UCI protocols.

Albert

What _is_ the intent here. To deflect attention elsewhere once more? The evidence does _not_ have to show that is what helps fruit do anything. It only has to show that fruit was copied. Where are you trying to go with this? The goal of the two original investigators here was to simply answer the question "was rybka derived from fruit?" why is it necessary to have a continually shifting target and why do others get to dictate what Zach and Christophe were trying to answer?

Quite simply, copying _any part_ of a GPL program is not permissable. _any part_. Not just "key parts".

I'm not deflecting attention from anything.

The initial accusations stemmed from Rybka's astonishing evolution, thus foul play had to be behind it. You and others have accused other programs of this in the past, and gotten egg in the face for it.

A precise challenge. Please show _one_ single example where I have accused someone that was wrong. Just one example will be enough to make your above statement true. I claim your statement is a flat falsehood. The only programs _I_ have accused of being a clone were proven by me by comparing directly to the source of my program. Le Petite. Voyager. Bionic Impakt, and some others I am sure I have forgotten.

So feel free to show exactly where I "got egg inmy face." Or perhaps it will be you that are wearing the egg instead.

I assume you have some proof since you now address me specifically. Go for it.

The secret to this evolution would supposedly be because it borrowed heavily from Fruit. Vas couldn't possibly have done this on his own, he must have borrowed hundreds of Elo worth of info from Fruit.

And where are you getting that from? Christophe has not said that. Zach has not said that. They are simply looking at the potential for a GPL violation because some code was apparently copied.

Again, you (and others) want to divert attention, injecting comments about claims that have not even been made in the current discussions.

If you spend hours and hours, and then show that it has code that is as useless to its playing ability as UCI code, well, you may theoretically have a case, I couldn't say, but you and your reputation will still get egg in the face.

My 2 cents.

And which is actually worth quite a bit less than 2 cents, to boot. I have made _zero_ claims in the current discussion. I have given two strong opinions about what has been presented:

(1) the evidence looks pretty convincing so far, particularly with no rebuttal to any of it.

(2) the idea that two programs developed by different authors without collaboration, will, by chance, have lots of common lines of code is just garbage.

As to actual code copying, I haven't seen any allusion to it, only claims of potentially suspicious similarities.

Albert

[Albert Silver]

Why don't you give them some time to produce the results of their research, instead of flaming the results before they are produced?

Well, considering they have started threads, and produced hundreds of posts on the matter, it seems strange to me to be asked to now wait for the results to be produced. What were the claims based on? The number of letters in the name?

Furthermore, the evidence presented will have to show that it is what helps Fruit play as well as it does, and this is also what helps Rybka play as well as it does. Otherwise, the evidence really wouldn't be any better than identical UCI protocols.

Albert

What _is_ the intent here. To deflect attention elsewhere once more? The evidence does _not_ have to show that is what helps fruit do anything. It only has to show that fruit was copied. Where are you trying to go with this? The goal of the two original investigators here was to simply answer the question "was rybka derived from fruit?" why is it necessary to have a continually shifting target and why do others get to dictate what Zach and Christophe were trying to answer?

Quite simply, copying _any part_ of a GPL program is not permissable. _any part_. Not just "key parts".

I'm not deflecting attention from anything.

The initial accusations stemmed from Rybka's astonishing evolution, thus foul play had to be behind it. You and others have accused other programs of this in the past, and gotten egg in the face for it.

A precise challenge. Please show _one_ single example where I have accused someone that was wrong. Just one example will be enough to make your above statement true. I claim your statement is a flat falsehood. The only programs _I_ have accused of being a clone were proven by me by comparing directly to the source of my program. Le Petite. Voyager. Bionic Impakt, and some others I am sure I have forgotten.

So feel free to show exactly where I "got egg in my face." Or perhaps it will be you that are wearing the egg instead.

I assume you have some proof since you now address me specifically. Go for it.

Subject: Re: Ruffian is here - Make your move Bob Hyatt!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 11:19:51 09/23/02

Ruffian could be any of the following, in decreasing order of probability:

1. A copy of a freeware engine with some changes or additions.

2. A copy of a commercial engine, aided by a hex editor to change strings
to disguise what has happened.

3. A copy of a commercial engine, modified, after someone found access to
the un-released source code somehow.

4. A program written by a current commercial (or amateur) author and released
anonymously, for reasons I wouldn't try to guess.

5. A completely new program, developed by a completely new author, sight-
unseen by anybody until very recently.

It _could_ be any of those. I don't have an opinion yet, except that the
above list is written in decreasing probability order.

No "impossible" entry on the above list. But the bottom item is _very_ low
probability, IMHO of course...

Of course, you may argue that you didn't actually accuse it, but your comments clearly say that the least likely possibility is that Ruffian was an original program.

From the same thread:

Subject: Re: Ruffian is here - Make your move Bob Hyatt!

Author: Dieter Buerssner

Date: 15:58:33 09/23/02

To Robert Hyatt - I cannot see anything concrete in your argument. What do you mean be "that talked one or the other"? Who is one? Who is another?

Is it so difficult to say just once: "ok, I was wrong here"? Really seems to be the case. Our very first discussion here on CCC was about random numbers. I seriousily believe, that I know a lot more about this, than you. But it was no problem for you, to teach me some lectures about pseudo random number generators (I believe most of it was just wrong) Still, you allways try to have the last word (with very doubious arguments, IMHO). You seem to have more time for such discussions than me. So, sooner or later, after all your diversifications, I must give up.

(...)

After all this, can I take your comments seriously anymore?

Eventually, Ruffian was freed of all this innuendo and exonerated of the charges. Do you want me to also dig up direct quotes where you say how improbable it is that Vas created an original program capable of evolving so fast?

Albert

P.S. The blue text isn't colored text, but hyperlinks to the source.

[Uri Blass]

What is the problem with evaluate?
Most bitboard engines have also an normal board array. And piece lists could be generated in the eval from bitboards. With these two things, one could probably insert the fruit evaluation almost as it is. (I'm not an expert in fruits data structures, so correct me if I'm wrong).

This doesn't mean that I believe Vas actually did that. I think he had his own ideas for the eval. Just to say the possibility can not be ruled out in advance.
I leave that to the experts to analyse.

The question is if it is against the GPL to insert fruit's evaluation almost as it is in bitboard.

I had discussion about it in email with Fabien Letouzey in 21.8.2005

Fabien gave no objection to the following idea that was in my email

"I thought also about the possibility of using the same algorithm as
fruit with the different data structure that I have for the board so I
cannot use simply copy and paste so I can compare speed of fruit's
data structure with the speed of my data structure but I am not sure
if it is ok to do it."

I understood from Fabien Letouzey that it is not against the GPL because
he gave no objection(he only said that there may be a problem with tournament organisers but from his point of view
I am free to use fruit's ideas as long as I do not use copy and paste.

practically I have different evaluation than fruit and I did not implement the idea that I thought about(I only took few ideas but even in this case I decided to go for different evaluation with these ideas).

I also did not like to drop my evaluation and adding fruit's evaluation as is with no corrections did not fit other parts of my evaluation.

Uri

[henkf]

I remember the thread you have partially posted and I wonder why you ended with _this_ reply of Dieter Buerssner. After a respons of Bob there was another reply frion Dieter containing amongst some other text this:

"
I did not say or imply, that you said, that Ruffian is some sort of clone. Just
that at least your point 2 is invalid.

Sorry again, for my mistone
"

[Albert Silver]

I remember the thread you have partially posted and I wonder why you ended with _this_ reply of Dieter Buerssner. After a respons of Bob there was another reply frion Dieter containing amongst some other text this:

"
I did not say or imply, that you said, that Ruffian is some sort of clone. Just
that at least your point 2 is invalid.

Sorry again, for my mistone
"

Because the reply was representative. Bob didn't actually say Ruffian was a clone, he merely states that is the most probable case. The same could be said about Rybka, but if he didn't really have an opinion in the matter, he wouldn't say a thing. We already know that he believes that if anyone disassembles and takes from Rybka, that Vas will have deserved it. It is his belief that because he answered some questions by Vas in CCC, Vas owes it to reveal his trade secrets. Note that I haven't seen this requirement from ANY OTHER PROGRAMMER. Just Vas.

The fact that Dieter apologizes doesn't mean he doesn't believe what he wrote, merely that he doesn't wish to create bad blood with Bob, which is fine, but changes nothing.

In any case, as a side-argument, if you consider that since Rybka 1.0 first came out, stronger than every program on the market, it has improved by no less than 300 Elo (!!) in 2.5 years, something that no one has come close to in pure software, it seems increasingly probable that Vas did in fact do it on his own. Still, let's not divert attention from this with logic (heaven forbid).

Albert