"Public court hearing soon!"

[Rebel]

Sounds like, hear the arguments of the parties involved, then the judge makes a decision if the case is admissible for prosecution?

German law, anyone?

[Ras]

Sounds like, hear the arguments of the parties involved, then the judge makes a decision if the case is admissible for prosecution?

Under German law, you have either a criminal case where the state is the plaintiff, and the accused is the defendant. In that case, "innocent until proven guilty" holds. The worst case result, depending on the charges of course, is prison for the defendant.

If two civil parties battle in court among each other, that's a civil case. There is no "innocent until proven guilty" here because it's not a criminal affair, and neither side has the state's monopoly of violence for retrieving proofs. So in general, each side has to present their position along with evidence where applicable, and the judge decides. There is no prison risk for the defendant here, and no prosecution - unless of course during the proceedings, criminal actions come to light which in turn might trigger a separate criminal case. But generally, the lawyers of each side should avoid revealing such incriminating material to begin with.

In this specific case, the plaintiffs need to show evidence that:
1) the defendant has used code they claim authorship of, and
2) they actually are the authors of that code, and
3) the code that falls under their own authorship has sufficient level of creativity to fall under copyright, and
4) the GPL is the applicable licence for this code.

If (if!) the plaintiffs win, the defendant would ideally decide to comply with the GPL's requirements. Just stopping to sell the program would not undo the copyright infringement committed until then, and the plaintiffs might decide to seek compensation for each copy that had been sold.

Given that Chessbase has entered the court, this suggests that they either don't agree with at least one of the four points, or that they don't think the plaintiffs can show sufficient evidence for each of the four points, or that they don't take the GPL seriously. The latter would be outright stupid, given the successful track record of GPL lawsuits in Germany e.g. against router manufacturers.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Ras,

that's what we are thinking after some corrections before GPL3 is out.
Not for the conflict between GPL2 and GPL3 only, other smaller problems before.

Microsoft need a longer time for check that.
A reason more to thinking that all is clean, or better it must be clean.

Today opinion changed from persons have really knowledge about it.
I lean my lection for a professional work (nothing to do with chess).
Can't give here information.

Will not see again such a surpise that a company make a product from one of other young programmers available.
Houdini or FatFritz should be enough disappointment.

Best
Frank


BTW: For the Piphisto project from Alex (modul for older Mephisto chess computers, like Modular, Exclusive, München) it would be great if CT-800 can be one of the three standard engines. Wasp, Rodent and CT-800. Later user can install others ARM7 engines. Today I got the Alpha-Prototyp, in the next days I will write a Wasp news about it. The project is in Milestone 8 of 10. It would be really great if we can use later your CT-800 ... absoluty wish engine from Alex and me. After Milestone 9 we will send you in detail more information.

[dkappe]

4) the GPL is the applicable licence for this code.

You forgot 5) the terms of the GPL were violated. As such it’s not a simple copyright case. If the terms of the GPL weren’t violated (e.g. the source code of the distributed software were made available via github), then there is no case to answer. There are some questions of law around the copyright of the FF2 neural network (see the article link I shared above), but that doesn’t seem likely to pan out.

[Sopel]

From GPLv3 licensetext:

The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all
the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable
work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to
control those activities.

FF2 had a network embedded in the object code, so according to my understanding it is part of the corresponding source.

That blog post linked earlier by dkappe also appears irrelevant, as it heavily assumes the case relies on the neural network part, which I think was debunked a few times (and also pretty obvious consider sni and tord are involved?).

[noobpwnftw]

I think the matter is hardly relevant by the time this bureaucracy comes to any conclusion, the reality is that it took long enough for someone to assert that it never actually happened. While FF2 is more of a meme now, it can still generate some entertainment once in a while.

[AndrewGrant]

I think the matter is hardly relevant by the time this bureaucracy comes to any conclusion, the reality is that it took long enough for someone to assert that it never actually happened. While FF2 is more of a meme now, it can still generate some entertainment once in a while.

Verdict is already in for the court of public opinion (https://lichess.org/blog/YCvy7xMAACIA80 ... -a-rip-off)
Question is whether or not people not in-the-know continue to be ripped off by hacks like Albert, Houdart, among others.

At this point, the only people giving any time to these illegal clones are some of the rating lists, and the kinds of posters here that think a PSQT altered Stockfish is worth writing threads about. And the rating lists are _mostly_ a historical thing, not an actively testing new versions -- like in Fire's case having its results pulled from CEGT for having reused a Stockfish network in an already Stockfish-forked engine. Fire and Houdini are ex communicado from both Chess.com's CCC as well as TCEC's events. DeusX and Fat Fritz 2 are so beyond that status that I cannot recall seeing a single conversation about either engine with respect to CCC or TCEC.

Would be nice for a ruling in favor of Stockfish team though. Anything else calls into question the point of licensing under the GPLv3. Someone hands you this incredible gift, and there are only a small number of strings attached. And somehow people still manage to bite the hand that feeds them.

[dkappe]

FF2 had a network embedded in the object code, so according to my understanding it is part of the corresponding source.

Ah, the old cure clause.

Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.

Did you read your own preceding paragraph? You know, about the embedded network? Then you write this?

That blog post linked earlier by dkappe also appears irrelevant, as it heavily assumes the case relies on the neural network part, which I think was debunked a few times (and also pretty obvious consider sni and tord are involved?).

I hope your lawyers are better.

[kranium]

I think the matter is hardly relevant by the time this bureaucracy comes to any conclusion, the reality is that it took long enough for someone to assert that it never actually happened. While FF2 is more of a meme now, it can still generate some entertainment once in a while.

Verdict is already in for the court of public opinion (https://lichess.org/blog/YCvy7xMAACIA80 ... -a-rip-off)
Question is whether or not people not in-the-know continue to be ripped off by hacks like Albert, Houdart, among others.

At this point, the only people giving any time to these illegal clones are some of the rating lists, and the kinds of posters here that think a PSQT altered Stockfish is worth writing threads about. And the rating lists are _mostly_ a historical thing, not an actively testing new versions -- like in Fire's case having its results pulled from CEGT for having reused a Stockfish network in an already Stockfish-forked engine. Fire and Houdini are ex communicado from both Chess.com's CCC as well as TCEC's events. DeusX and Fat Fritz 2 are so beyond that status that I cannot recall seeing a single conversation about either engine with respect to CCC or TCEC.

Would be nice for a ruling in favor of Stockfish team though. Anything else calls into question the point of licensing under the GPLv3. Someone hands you this incredible gift, and there are only a small number of strings attached. And somehow people still manage to bite the hand that feeds them.

Fire is not a Stockfish 'fork', it's open source and attributions are abundant and clear. Ethereal actually has higher Similarity (SIM test) to SF in my tests. Fire and Houdini were removed from TCEC and CCC primarily because of your (and your fanboys) pressure and bullying.

Yes let's clean things up entirely, which means Ethereal should be included along with Houdini and Fat Fritz...or any such complaint. Let's consider the fact that you're making money (just like Chessbase and Houdini) while your codebase contains whole pages of source code taken directly from Stockfish...and there's absolutely no mention or attribution to them on your commercial web page, or on your github readme.md other than:

https://github.com/AndyGrant/Ethereal/b ... /windows.c
"Current code from Stockfish authors."

[AndrewGrant]

I think the matter is hardly relevant by the time this bureaucracy comes to any conclusion, the reality is that it took long enough for someone to assert that it never actually happened. While FF2 is more of a meme now, it can still generate some entertainment once in a while.

Verdict is already in for the court of public opinion (https://lichess.org/blog/YCvy7xMAACIA80 ... -a-rip-off)
Question is whether or not people not in-the-know continue to be ripped off by hacks like Albert, Houdart, among others.

At this point, the only people giving any time to these illegal clones are some of the rating lists, and the kinds of posters here that think a PSQT altered Stockfish is worth writing threads about. And the rating lists are _mostly_ a historical thing, not an actively testing new versions -- like in Fire's case having its results pulled from CEGT for having reused a Stockfish network in an already Stockfish-forked engine. Fire and Houdini are ex communicado from both Chess.com's CCC as well as TCEC's events. DeusX and Fat Fritz 2 are so beyond that status that I cannot recall seeing a single conversation about either engine with respect to CCC or TCEC.

Would be nice for a ruling in favor of Stockfish team though. Anything else calls into question the point of licensing under the GPLv3. Someone hands you this incredible gift, and there are only a small number of strings attached. And somehow people still manage to bite the hand that feeds them.

Fire is not a Stockfish 'fork', it's open source and attributions are abundant and clear. Ethereal actually has higher Similarity (SIM test) to SF in my tests. Fire and Houdini were removed from TCEC and CCC primarily because of your (and your fanboys) pressure and bullying.

Yes let's clean things up entirely, which means Ethereal should be included along with Houdini and Fat Fritz...or any such complaint. Let's consider the fact that you're making money (just like Chessbase and Houdini) while your codebase contains whole pages of source code taken directly from Stockfish...and there's absolutely no mention or attribution to them on your commercial web page, or on your github readme.md other than:

https://github.com/AndyGrant/Ethereal/b ... /windows.c
"Current code from Stockfish authors."

Yes Norman. The whole world has wrongly conspired against you.