CCRL/CEGT Hypocritical

[Laskos]

I think indeed that such a conversion would not be considered a translation in the sense of the copyright laws. If it would, then Fruit itself would not be copyrightable, as it is merely a slightly improved rewrite of TSCP...

And yet among all these "shadowy" engines, only Rybka is commercial, and is supported by some big interests here as A. Silver is one shamelessly vocal. Now, after hearing about vocal Chessbase affairs here (it was an utter surprise to me), I begin to suspect even the basement testers as G. Banks of some affairs.

Kai

[hgm]

What is "shadowy" about Rybka then? Is it just that it becomes true because people have repeated it often enough? It is well known that all Chess engines in existence, with the possible exceptions of Pos 1.19 and NEG 0.3d, are re-writes of each other. The really original work was all done by Shannon. so they are all "shadowy". And many of them are comemrcial.

So you are just talking nonsense.

[Laskos]

What is "shadowy" about Rybka then? Is it just that it becomes true because people have repeated it often enough? It is well known that all Chess engines in existence, with the possible exceptions of Pos 1.19 and NEG 0.3d, are re-writes of each other. The really original work was all done by Shannon. so they are all "shadowy". And many of them are comemrcial.

So you are just talking nonsense.

If I am talking nonsense, then what about your crapping about Houdini? If all engines since Shannon are "shadowy", then please crap at every tree

You prefer to preferentially crap about some engines. People at an old age can become very self-conscious philistines

Kai

[hgm]

"Shadowy" seems your terminology for "re-write", (to confuse matters?), and why would I have anything against re-writes?

What I think is reproachable, is stealing code of a commercial engine by de-compilation / disassembly, and publishing it as your own. And not only that: it seems a clear infringement on copyrights.

[Laskos]

"Shadowy" seems your terminology for "re-write", (to confuse matters?), and why would I have anything against re-writes?

What I think is reproachable, is stealing code of a commercial engine by de-compilation / disassembly, and publishing it as your own. And not only that: it seems a clear infringement on copyrights.

As long as we can refer to justice, it's easier to prove the copyright infringement of a patent (or GPL software) than a decompile infringement (which violates copyright). First charge is primary, second is indirect. Maybe not the justice is what you have in your mind Second, commercially using GPL violation is a prima facia evidence and accusation.

Kai

[hgm]

Not sure what point you are trying to make. "Crimes with a smaller probability to get caught are less serious crimes", is that it?

[Osipov Jury]

Not sure what point you are trying to make. "Crimes with a smaller probability to get caught are less serious crimes", is that it?

We (in Russia) talking about it anyway. If you stole $ 1, then you're a criminal. If you stole a billion, you are - respected people in society.

[Laskos]

Not sure what point you are trying to make. "Crimes with a smaller probability to get caught are less serious crimes", is that it?

Less penalty assumes a lesser crime, that's how justice systems usually work, aren't they? Maybe it's not justice what you are talking about? And you are completely twisting the roles here, blaming a thing which even in justice would be hardly punishable, defending a more punishable act. I don't think it would be meaningful to go beyond justice, to some moral considerations, as even there the things would not favour you.

Kai

[Sven]

"Shadowy" seems your terminology for "re-write", (to confuse matters?), and why would I have anything against re-writes?

What I think is reproachable, is stealing code of a commercial engine by de-compilation / disassembly, and publishing it as your own. And not only that: it seems a clear infringement on copyrights.

As long as we can refer to justice, it's easier to prove the copyright infringement of a patent (or GPL software) than a decompile infringement (which violates copyright). First charge is primary, second is indirect. Maybe not the justice is what you have in your mind Second, commercially using GPL violation is a prima facia evidence and accusation.

Kai

Only the author (the copyright holder) of GPL software is in the position to claim a GPL violation regarding his software. Not you, not the "computer chess community" or its self-proclaimed judges. If such claim does not happen (and this is the case, Fabien sees no problem and obviously accepts Rybka 1.0 beta) then there is no point in repeatedly stating "GPL violation".

The same applies to any claiming of "reverse engineering" (decompiling is technically the wrong word), of course. The tiny difference is: here the claim by the copyright holder (Vas) was raised - but without a proof, as we all know, obviously because proving would require revealing his sources which he a) does not want to and b) is not able to (for old versions). After reading the "BB+ report" in 2010 we only know that this claim was neither completely right nor completely wrong when comparing Ippo against R3, nothing more. We do not even know whether the major differences between Ippo and R3 that are shown by "BB+" are caused by the fact that Ippo is derived from some intermediate Rybka version later than R3. It may or may not be the case.


Second point, to get back to the thread topic: I can fully understand all those testers who do not want to include anonymous engines. I would like to encourage everyone not to support engines from unknown authors, knowing that I am not alone with this attitude.

This is not about "guilty" or "not guilty", of course. This is about acceptance of other people's doubts.

A difficult point is reached when it comes to engines which are (Fire) or might be (Houdini) heavily derived from freely available (public domain, not GPL!) source code of anonymous engines but for which no source code is publicly available (to my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong). It is not easy to come to a decision about supporting or not supporting these engines. Therefore everyone should respect the decision of testers in this area, opinions can vary a lot about this.

Sven

[noctiferus]

I do, and can say that in the Robbo source code almost every name is italian (always a good italian, but sometimes not perfect..)