Cluster Toga/Paderborn championship

[Tord Romstad]

Indeed, Cluster Toga is a legal and fully legitimate cooperation between Fabien, Thomas and Kai. This is the good side of open source.

Vas

Hard to see it as a "good side of open source" when it's not even open source.

It is not open source yet, but it might still be. But even if is never released as open source, I agree entirely with Vas' statement. One of the purposes of open source is to serve as a foundation for research. Without Fruit/Toga, it is possible that Kai's research would either have been impossible (because of too little time to develop a program of comparable strength) or considerably less interesting (because he would have been forced to use a weaker program as a foundation).

Even if Cluster Toga stays private, Kai's research increases our knowledge about chess programming, and is a big win to all of us.

Tord

[ChessAddict]

I think if engine's were at least on equal processor size then maybe we can see a comparison. It took alot of cpu's to beat Rybka. Not sure what Rybka was using.

[Dann Corbit]

isn't it complete Toga which is open source?

They modified Toga to work on large numbers of processors, and as of now have not released the source to their modifications. So that's why it's not open source.

Simply put, they are not allowed to do that.
Toga is GPL, because Fruit is GPL and so Cluster Toga *must* be GPL.

This is correct, but it doesn't quite imply that Cluster Toga must be open source. The GPL states that if you distribute a program based on the original GPLed source code to someone -- even if it is just to a single person -- you have to give that person access to the full source code, and allow her to freely redistribute the source code or any work based on it.

In other words, as long as Kai only uses his tournament to participate in tournaments, he has no obligation to make his modified source code available to the public.

Tord

I can't be sure of what is restricted. Here is what it says:
[quote:gpl]
"You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you."
[/quote:gpl]
It seems to me that playing the program in an international contest is outside of the scope of having someone work on it for you. But I have always had trouble reading the GPL.

[Dirt]

[quote:gpl]
"You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you."
[/quote:gpl]
It seems to me that playing the program in an international contest is outside of the scope of having someone work on it for you. But I have always had trouble reading the GPL.

That paragraph doesn't seem to exist in the Toga license. Without checking I would guess that is from GPLv3, and all the Toga versions I have are under GPLv2. GPLv2 doesn't add any restrictions on usage beyond what any copyrighted work inherently has; it only conditionally removes restrictions.

Even in the paragraph you quoted the restrictions only apply if you "convey" a program, which the Cluster Toga people apparently don't.

[Christopher Conkie]

because of too little time to develop a program of comparable strength

I was just wondering if I took Glaurung and modified it, then took away it license and called it "Odin".

If I then entered it in the WCCC you would consider that "research"?

This is the problem Tord. Jumping straight in at 2800 elo is a big slap in the face to all those authors who did take a long time to develop their engines.

I too have no problem with open source. I do have a big problem with those who think it is ok to ride roughshod over those who put alot of their time and effort to develop an original program that through time increased in strength.

There is nothing wrong with research but those engines should not be in tournaments. Exhibtions maybe but not tournaments like that.

As to the precious GPL, its more trouble than its worth. Even you people dont know what is allowed and not allowed under its terms.

Its like mud wrestling.......slippery and messy.

Christopher

[hgm]

I was just wondering if I took Glaurung and modified it, then took away it license and called it "Odin".

If I then entered it in the WCCC you would consider that "research"?

What do you mean 'take away the license'? Only the copyright holder can take away the license, or change the conditions. Others can merely act in violation of the license agreement.

Participating with GPL'ed software in a computer-Chess tournament is not a violation of the GPL. It is normal use of the software. It might be against tournament rules, but that is a different matter.

[Tord Romstad]

I was just wondering if I took Glaurung and modified it, then took away it license and called it "Odin".

OK so far, apart from taking away the license, which you can't do. You can keep it as it is, or replace it with a more recent version of the GPL (if and when a more recent version is released).

If I then entered it in the WCCC you would consider that "research"?

No, participating in the WCCC by itself is of course not research, but for some people it could be a useful way to get publicity for their research, which could make it easier to find funding. I have no problems with this.

As for whether a program based on mine should be allowed to play in the WCCC, this is an entirely different and unrelated question, and as HGM points out, it has nothing to do with the license. The ICGA makes the rules, including the rules concerning who is allowed to participate. Programmers who don't like the rules can simply refuse to participate, and find some other tournament to play instead.

If you want my personal opinion the ICGA rules: I think they are OK. If I remember correctly, they allow only a single program per author, but they do allow programs with more than one author, as long as all the authors agree to let the program participate (which they did in the case of Gridchess/Cluster Toga). This seems very reasonable to me.

This is the problem Tord. Jumping straight in at 2800 elo is a big slap in the face to all those authors who did take a long time to develop their engines.

Fabien, Thomas and Kai didn't jump straight in at 2800 Elo. Fruit and Toga have been under development for many years. Fruit 1.0 wasn't very strong, and there were still weaker private versions before that. You seem to forget that Kai has never claimed that Cluster Toga was his work alone. It has always been presented as a multi-author engine.

Spike also has more than one author. Do you think it is unfair that Spike can participate in the WCCC? If not, what is the fundamental difference compared to Cluster Toga?

There is nothing wrong with research but those engines should not be in tournaments.

I think those who arrange tournaments should be free to use whatever rules they want.

As to the precious GPL, its more trouble than its worth. Even you people dont know what is allowed and not allowed under its terms.

That's the case for all licenses, isn't it? There are always some weird corner cases which even lawyers (or perhaps especially lawyers) can't agree about. I consider the GPL to be philosophically very simple: Essentially, you are given complete freedom to do whatever you want with the software, as long as you make sure that all users of modified versions of the software get the same freedom.

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

It seems to me that playing the program in an international contest is outside of the scope of having someone work on it for you. But I have always had trouble reading the GPL.

If some part of the GPL is diffcult to understand, you can always have a look at the FAQ, which is a lot easier to read for non-lawyers.

In this particular case, the relevant question is this one.

Tord

[Christopher Conkie]

I was just wondering if I took Glaurung and modified it, then took away it license and called it "Odin".

If I then entered it in the WCCC you would consider that "research"?

What do you mean 'take away the license'? Only the copyright holder can take away the license, or change the conditions. Others can merely act in violation of the license agreement.

Take it away. Remove it and claim it as mine.

Participating with GPL'ed software in a computer-Chess tournament is not a violation of the GPL. It is normal use of the software. It might be against tournament rules, but that is a different matter.

I never really did care for the GPL. Rules? What rules....now you must be joking. Toga with no GPL is against the rules.

Christopher

[hgm]

I hardly pay any attention to engines in this Elo range, but Toga is available under GPL, isn't it? If not, it would still be OK if Fabien gave special permission to Thomas to use the Fruit code in this way, as long as Fruit did not contain any GPL'ed code of which the copyrights rested by others.

A license agreement never limits what the owner of the copyrights is allowed to do with his creations, and he remains always free to license whomever he chooses on completely different conditions.

Claim a copyrighted work as your own is simply fraud. It would not remove the license. Anyone using it as a basis for a new development would still be using code as it appeared in Glaurung, although it might have acquired it in a file called Odin.c. It would remain a copy of Glaurung, and to use it tou would have to have permission if the copyright owner.