The open source scam

[Michael Sherwin]

First, let me say that this is not directed towards anyone nor do I have anyone in mind. This is just a hypothetical possibility. I know that this will not win me any friends--oh well.

The more that I think about having open source for strong chess engines the more that I am not in favor of it. This is just the latest notion to have crossed my mind about the matter--that it could be a very clever scam.

This is how the scam would work:

1.) write a strong open source engine, but leave out some really good secrets

2.) get lots of help improving it (it is strong, so people will help)

3.) close the source and add the secrets

4.) win the World Championship and/or go commercial making lots of money

5.) pitty all the poor suckers that helped you do it

[Roman Hartmann]

First, let me say that this is not directed towards anyone nor do I have anyone in mind. This is just a hypothetical possibility. I know that this will not win me any friends--oh well.

The more that I think about having open source for strong chess engines the more that I am not in favor of it. This is just the latest notion to have crossed my mind about the matter--that it could be a very clever scam.

This is how the scam would work:

1.) write a strong open source engine, but leave out some really good secrets

2.) get lots of help improving it (it is strong, so people will help)

3.) close the source and add the secrets

4.) win the World Championship and/or go commercial making lots of money

5.) pitty all the poor suckers that helped you do it

Hi Michael,
I have troubles with strong open sourced engines as well but for other reasons.
Point 2 in your list is probably overestimated. Actually I think that a strong open sourced engine helps mainly others improving their engines while they might not share their secrets with the author of the open source engine. Point 4 is something I cannot agree as well, at least with the making lots of money part. I strongly doubt that todays top chess programmers get rich by selling chess engines.

Roman

[Alessandro Scotti]

You cannot close the source if you have received contributions from other people. The only source you can close is your original start point, so without improvements. If you close the source including the external contribution, that makes you no different from ordinary cloners.

[jdart]

GPL is designed to prevent this because it doesn't allow closing source that is derived from a previous open source release.

If you care about your contributions to open source not being misused in the way you suggest, you can assure yourself of this by only contributing to GPL or similarly licensed projects.

[Michael Sherwin]

You cannot close the source if you have received contributions from other people. The only source you can close is your original start point, so without improvements. If you close the source including the external contribution, that makes you no different from ordinary cloners.

Hi Alessandro,

But, but, but, when I brought up this point about Fabien making Fruit's sources closed again, you wrote that Fabien can do anything that he wanted to, because, he was the original author. Fruit has definatly benifited from being open sourced. Are you now saying that Fabien is no different from an ordinary cloner? What am I missing here? And for clarity, I do not believe that you are saying anything of the sort, about Fabien. Just trying to clarify the issue.

My rewrite of RomiChess will be up and running very shortly (poor Hamsters! ) and I have been struggling with whether to make it open source, like in the past, or not. I am 99.9% sure that the new RomiChess will not be open source. Maybe I should rename it, since it has no code in common with the old engine.

[Michael Sherwin]

GPL is designed to prevent this because it doesn't allow closing source that is derived from a previous open source release.

If you care about your contributions to open source not being misused in the way you suggest, you can assure yourself of this by only contributing to GPL or similarly licensed projects.

Hi Jon,

What about Fruit? Should Fruit's code be released?

[Michael Sherwin]

First, let me say that this is not directed towards anyone nor do I have anyone in mind. This is just a hypothetical possibility. I know that this will not win me any friends--oh well.

The more that I think about having open source for strong chess engines the more that I am not in favor of it. This is just the latest notion to have crossed my mind about the matter--that it could be a very clever scam.

This is how the scam would work:

1.) write a strong open source engine, but leave out some really good secrets

2.) get lots of help improving it (it is strong, so people will help)

3.) close the source and add the secrets

4.) win the World Championship and/or go commercial making lots of money

5.) pitty all the poor suckers that helped you do it

Hi Michael,
I have troubles with strong open sourced engines as well but for other reasons.
Point 2 in your list is probably overestimated. Actually I think that a strong open sourced engine helps mainly others improving their engines while they might not share their secrets with the author of the open source engine. Point 4 is something I cannot agree as well, at least with the making lots of money part. I strongly doubt that todays top chess programmers get rich by selling chess engines.

Roman

Hi Roman,

Reality and expectation/motivation are not always in sync with each other.

[Uri Blass]

You cannot close the source if you have received contributions from other people. The only source you can close is your original start point, so without improvements. If you close the source including the external contribution, that makes you no different from ordinary cloners.

Hi Alessandro,

But, but, but, when I brought up this point about Fabien making Fruit's sources closed again, you wrote that Fabien can do anything that he wanted to, because, he was the original author. Fruit has definatly benifited from being open sourced. Are you now saying that Fabien is no different from an ordinary cloner? What am I missing here? And for clarity, I do not believe that you are saying anything of the sort, about Fabien. Just trying to clarify the issue.

My rewrite of RomiChess will be up and running very shortly (poor Hamsters! ) and I have been struggling with whether to make it open source, like in the past, or not. I am 99.9% sure that the new RomiChess will not be open source. Maybe I should rename it, since it has no code in common with the old engine.

Fabien did not continue from code of other but from code of himself.
I believe that Fabien did a big mistake by releasing his code and the result is that fruit lost the first place for rybka.

Uri

[Uri Blass]

First, let me say that this is not directed towards anyone nor do I have anyone in mind. This is just a hypothetical possibility. I know that this will not win me any friends--oh well.

The more that I think about having open source for strong chess engines the more that I am not in favor of it. This is just the latest notion to have crossed my mind about the matter--that it could be a very clever scam.

This is how the scam would work:

1.) write a strong open source engine, but leave out some really good secrets

2.) get lots of help improving it (it is strong, so people will help)

3.) close the source and add the secrets

4.) win the World Championship and/or go commercial making lots of money

5.) pitty all the poor suckers that helped you do it

I disagree.
If you can do 1 then you probably do not need other people to do 2 for you.

I think that you overestimate 2.
What Thomas did for fruit is things that Fabien also could do for himself
but he could prevent Vasik to learn from fruit source by not publishing it.

It means that Fabien could probably get the same level without releasing his source but the opponents could not get the same level so fruit could be relatively better in comparison to other programs assuming that it is a closed source program.

Uri

[Michael Sherwin]

You cannot close the source if you have received contributions from other people. The only source you can close is your original start point, so without improvements. If you close the source including the external contribution, that makes you no different from ordinary cloners.

Hi Alessandro,

But, but, but, when I brought up this point about Fabien making Fruit's sources closed again, you wrote that Fabien can do anything that he wanted to, because, he was the original author. Fruit has definatly benifited from being open sourced. Are you now saying that Fabien is no different from an ordinary cloner? What am I missing here? And for clarity, I do not believe that you are saying anything of the sort, about Fabien. Just trying to clarify the issue.

My rewrite of RomiChess will be up and running very shortly (poor Hamsters! ) and I have been struggling with whether to make it open source, like in the past, or not. I am 99.9% sure that the new RomiChess will not be open source. Maybe I should rename it, since it has no code in common with the old engine.

Fabien did not continue from code of other but from code of himself.
I believe that Fabien did a big mistake by releasing his code and the result is that fruit lost the first place for rybka.

Uri

Hi Uri,

One hundred percent agreed on second point.

But, how do you know for sure that the newer Fruit versions did not benifit from contributions gained from the open source version?