AndrewGrant wrote: ↑Tue Jul 05, 2022 1:15 pmAll publicity is good publicity is not a truism. Take a person that knows nothing about it. Then tell them about Fat Fritz 2, and how its just Stockfish.
AndrewGrant wrote: ↑Tue Jul 05, 2022 1:15 pmAll publicity is good publicity is not a truism. Take a person that knows nothing about it. Then tell them about Fat Fritz 2, and how its just Stockfish.
dkappe wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 6:46 pm
Main takeaways:
1. Another hearing in a year.
2. Withdrawal of license (if valid) would be restricted to SF13.
3. Some scheme proposed to have CB ask SF for permission to publish new engines based on SF. (Noob proposing to act in bad faith by always refusing permission. Someone stuff a sock in that guy’s mouth.)
2. and 3. seem to contradict.
If the GPL granted to CB is only withdrawn for SF13, then it is not withdrawn for other versions and there is no need to ask for permission.
As I mentioned previously, the judge (and both party’s lawyers) didn’t seem to have a good sense of the GPL or modern software development. I wonder if it would be possible for a third party to submit a clarifying brief.
Fat Titz by Stockfish, the engine with the bodaciously big net. Remember: size matters. If you want to learn more about this engine just google for "Fat Titz".
AndrewGrant wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 6:09 pm
Some of their distributions of FF2 did not contain notifications about the GPLv3 and thus about Stockfish. They've since rectified that.
Critically, they rectified all of those shortcomings within the period specified by the GPLv3.
Fat Titz by Stockfish, the engine with the bodaciously big net. Remember: size matters. If you want to learn more about this engine just google for "Fat Titz".
AndrewGrant wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 6:09 pm
Some of their distributions of FF2 did not contain notifications about the GPLv3 and thus about Stockfish. They've since rectified that.
Critically, they rectified all of those shortcomings within the period specified by the GPLv3.
Ovyron wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 3:24 pmIf you went and made a deal with chessbase to sell Ethereal V11.00 (some old engine that isn't even the best free one) with some catchy engine rename I guarantee it'd sell more than your NNUE, because those guys would publicize it and make people know about it, and convince them to buy it. They know what they're doing and that's why the Stockfish team are going to spend years fighting a lost cause.
The SF team does not (or at least should not) mind that CB or anyone else makes money from selling SF itself or some modification of SF. This is simply what the GPL allows and has always intended to allow.
What the SF teams fights is the alleged violation of the GPL by not making the FF2 net available for free. The SF team argues that the FF2 net is an inseparable part of FF2 and that CB should therefore not only release the FF2 source code under the GPL (which they do) but also the NN data.
I have two legal views on the whole issue:
1) There is no GPL violation (now that the NN net is no longer part of the FF2 executable). The NN is not an inseparable part of FF2 but merely input data. The fact that you need an NN file to be able to run FF2 is irrelevant. id Software has released the source code of quake under the GPL without releasing the data files that you need to run the quake executable compiled from the source code. It is perfectly legal to release a modified version of SF under the GPL that is entirely disfunctional: buggy, incomplete, or just missing input data files.
2) The FF2 NN data file is anyway free of copyright, so it can be freely distributed whether CB likes it or not.
Ovyron wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 3:24 pmIf you went and made a deal with chessbase to sell Ethereal V11.00 (some old engine that isn't even the best free one) with some catchy engine rename I guarantee it'd sell more than your NNUE, because those guys would publicize it and make people know about it, and convince them to buy it. They know what they're doing and that's why the Stockfish team are going to spend years fighting a lost cause.
The SF team does not (or at least should not) mind that CB or anyone else makes money from selling SF itself or some modification of SF. This is simply what the GPL allows and has always intended to allow.
What the SF teams fights is the alleged violation of the GPL by not making the FF2 net available for free. The SF team argues that that the FF2 net is an inseparable part of FF2 and that CB should therefore not only release the FF2 source code under the GPL (which they do) but also the NN data.
I have two legal views on the whole issue:
1) There is no GPL violation (now that the NN net is no longer part of the FF2 executable). The NN is not an inseparable part of FF2 but merely input data. The fact that you need an NN file to be able to run FF2 is irrelevant. id Software has released the source code of quake under the GPL without releasing the data files that you need to run the quake executable compiled from the source code. It is perfectly legal to release a modified version of SF under the GPL that is entirely disfunctional: buggy, incomplete, or just missing input data files.
2) The FF2 NN data file is anyway free of copyright, so it can be freely distributed whether CB likes it or not.
Are you sure that is what the SF team is fighting for? For the net to be public?
I'm fairly certain that there issue is that they revoked the GPLV3, and yet ChessBase still distributes.
AndrewGrant wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 6:15 pm
Yeah but critically they are repeat offenders.
That is a question of fact for the court. The FF2 issue was rectified within the timeframe specified by the license. A reasonable person would not view that as a violation. The Houdini issue was uncovered after the source code was stolen after illegal hacking. CB removed it from their store after being informed of the issue. My understanding is that Houdart is the one violating the GPLv3, not CB, but I’ll leave that to someone with actual knowledge of the law.
Never fear, though. You can still purchase Houdini 6 from other vendors, such as ChessOK.
Fat Titz by Stockfish, the engine with the bodaciously big net. Remember: size matters. If you want to learn more about this engine just google for "Fat Titz".
syzygy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 6:20 pm
2) The FF2 NN data file is anyway free of copyright, so it can be freely distributed whether CB likes it or not.
And here the only interesting part of the case, which wasn’t actually addressed in the hearing: can neural network weights be copyrighted? Licensed? This has implications far beyond chess.
To be clear, the FF2 on github is distributed with a NN, so it is functional.
Fat Titz by Stockfish, the engine with the bodaciously big net. Remember: size matters. If you want to learn more about this engine just google for "Fat Titz".
If they are generated using an automated process, I don't think that copyright can apply because that doesn't pass the required creativity threshold to be declared as works, given that it's the machine that generates the data, not a human author. That holds even if using Stockfish in self training, just like Adobe doesn't gain copyright to images made with Photoshop.
If on the other hand the training material is hand selected individually using some human judgement (e.g. for style), that can be different, but again, this would not apply to just exporting games from a huge database using some filters. Just like you cannot copyright some mere list of data, but you can copyright an individually chosen and commented list.
