Mostly for Christophe Theron

[chrisw]

<snipped>

I do believe computer chess has changed for the worst. Strong open source programs have made the field less interesting for programmers by taking away the value of some ideas that took a long time for them to find and implement. But maybe it has made the field more interesting for users, so be it. However we have seen at the same time the emergence of bad behaviour that takes advantage of the initially generous idea of open source. We have seen obvious clones and we have also seen that open source code could be hijacked to serve personal interests, which is open source used against the spirit of open source. Finally, free (but not open source) programs have been used as a way to kill the competition. It had never happened in the past. Users think it's great, but I don't think so.
- ...
// Christophe

I think that strong open source programs have more than one effect on programmers.

There are programmers who are less interested in programming because
of that but there are programmers with the opposite opinion.

I also dislike the fact that free non open source like rybka2.2n2 is used to kill the competition.

I see no reason for the release of Rybka2.2n2 as free source except trying to convince programmers of Hiarcs,Shredder,Fritz,Junior to quit for the simple reason that they get the feeling that they have no chance even to compete with free programs(even if they work hard and make something better than rybka2.2n2 in one year then Vas may release new free program that is stronger at that time).

Uri

Well, it is what it is. Computer chess does not exist to provide free lunches to programmers who cannot keep up.

[Karmazen & Oliver]

Dear Chris:
I just read in one of your posts belonging to a long thread that "it is time to retire".

I hope, also, you take my words in good spirit.
Fern

...

I'm not sure about the "one set of ideas" stuff. I started chess programming because I found it fascinating that a computer could play chess and wanted to know how it was possible.

As no information was available at that time, I had to build a chess program myself, with my own ideas, with the exception of a few ones that were already there like, for example, minimax.

In the process I discovered that I was able to do things I thought I could not do. So I can say that computer chess has allowed me to better know myself, or to reveal myself.

This started in 1979 with a Sargon II program running on TRS-80.

The first time my program has reached the level of the best ones is in 1998/1999. So almost 20 years passed between the first fascination to the partial achievement of the goal it had created.

During all that time, it would be wrong to say that I started from a set of ideas. It does not make sense. I started from nothing, and then ideas emerged one by one. Each new progress, which happened after testing a handful of bad ideas, was like entering a new territory. And led to other ideas that would not have been on my mind before.

Ok, indeed, I also think that. ¡

The exhaustion comes from several causes, some "internal", others "external":

External causes:
- you keep having ideas, but less of them end up being effective. It's not about the quality of your idea generator (=your brain), it's just an expected phenomenon...

of course... XD.

- improving your engine becomes slavery. It is a infinite cycle of implementing an idea or modifying some part of the program, launch a several hours long automatic test, and start over. As I wanted to try many ideas, in general it meant that ideas were waiting in line and several weeks would pass by between the idea and the moment it is tried. It kills all enthusiasm. And in order to keep the test line busy at all times you must wake up at night to keep feeding the beast. My test computers emitted loud beeps when the tests were finished so I could hear them and wake up if I was sleeping. Now add a girlfriend to the picture...

YES, that has a lot of logic...



(excuse me.. I meant in the image: ex-girlsfriends... number of EX... )

- I do believe computer chess has changed for the worst. Strong open source programs have made the field less interesting for programmers by taking away the value of some ideas that took a long time for them to find and implement. But maybe it has made the field more interesting for users, so be it. However we have seen at the same time the emergence of bad behaviour that takes advantage of the initially generous idea of open source. We have seen obvious clones and we have also seen that open source code could be hijacked to serve personal interests, which is open source used against the spirit of open source. - ...

interesting... a Spanish proverb that says exists but or fewer mean this way "... you shoot with pellet for wolves..."

( I don't know the expression in English... proverb...)

but, it has been perfectly clear... XD.

Finally, free (but not open source) programs have been used as a way to kill the competition. It had never happened in the past. Users think it's great, but I don't think so.

OK, obviously, I neither think that the spirit of the opened code source should be good for personal lucre...

if you act ethically on open code you should maintain your open license, (for that initially parts of a programming skeleton already built), and but it is the case to reach an agreement with the original programmer...

Internal causes:
- Motivation is not as strong anymore when you have achieved a goal you would not even have dreamed of. I mean, Chess Tiger has topped the SSDF list twice, so the best I could achieve after that, with all the hard work it would have required, is to do it again.

Ok. this is the pure true.

now then, that comment has but importance of which you believe for that in those times, you fought against "many" programs that worked in team, you fought against "multinational-chess" speaking-chess talk ?¡...

He/she has a lot of grouper that a programmer is able to explode the list twice SDFF, with competition of marks professionals that were devoted exclusively to the business of the chess...

with an own program and leaving of zero... a single programmer overcomes to the competition, something similar to david against goliat

- I am too much reluctant to use ideas found and implemented first by others. The problem is that in a world of strong open source programs you either do that or your program will not improve at the same pace as those who do. But doing it is no fun. I believe it's a weakness but that's how I am.

When the ethics and the personal convictions overcome the material interests the nirvana it is reached... by the way ...

The weaknesses make us interesting... in fact, if ChessTiger doesn't have weaknesses he/she would have a style of extremely boring game... XD

indeed in this competitive world his defect is a weakness, a healthy weakness and quite strange... isn´t it ?

the differences(~weakness) make us different...

- I have always had many different interests in life, computers being the most important, it's true. And just in the area of computing I also have many interests other than chess.
- ...

The bottom line is: time to retire.

However you never know. If only I had some time to work on it, I would maybe do exactly the opposite of what I have said.
// Christophe

The brain has a long useful life, sometimes while one thinks that we are not thinking of to solve a problem or to focus it from another point of view, in "time of wait" (stand-by ?) I-you this processing...

is the healthy thing that it continues a hobby who that knows that can happen being? can that some comments in some moment help other programmers ...

I wish him a happy day and a healthy retirement... although I hope to see him from time to time for the forums...


(excuse my audacity with English and if it is hard to translate in their group-works you think of word for word... uff )

Bye, from spain. Oliver.

[fern]

I accept everything you have said, but let me correct myself. With one st of ideas I used a bad expression. yes, ideas does not come all at once from the beginning and are, later, exhausted along the time. Perhaps a more precise statement would be that we have a set of potential ideas embedded with the utmost deep levels of our brains, that can take lot of time to develope or sometimes never does.
No that these hiddeen ideas are ready as such. Not as ideas. It io difficult to explain; let us say that we have sme disposition to develope some sort of ideas. We can, maybe, call them heuristics, dormant alost all the time.
Now, if being truth you can be all your luife undigging those iodeas and putting them to work, the point is you will not ever go beyond the frame of those heuristics.
Am I wrong?
Hope so.
I am a writer, 9 books to date, and I hope that I am not merely doing new books about the esentially same stuff.
All the other reasons you name are real and powerful, but een so I expect you will do as you say it could be, just do it again.
This is like when we add reasons to reject a lady. One, two....N reasons and at last you again run to her feets....

My very best
fern

[tiger]

<snipped>

I do believe computer chess has changed for the worst. Strong open source programs have made the field less interesting for programmers by taking away the value of some ideas that took a long time for them to find and implement. But maybe it has made the field more interesting for users, so be it. However we have seen at the same time the emergence of bad behaviour that takes advantage of the initially generous idea of open source. We have seen obvious clones and we have also seen that open source code could be hijacked to serve personal interests, which is open source used against the spirit of open source. Finally, free (but not open source) programs have been used as a way to kill the competition. It had never happened in the past. Users think it's great, but I don't think so.
- ...
// Christophe

I think that strong open source programs have more than one effect on programmers.

There are programmers who are less interested in programming because
of that but there are programmers with the opposite opinion.

I also dislike the fact that free non open source like rybka2.2n2 is used to kill the competition.

I see no reason for the release of Rybka2.2n2 as free source except trying to convince programmers of Hiarcs,Shredder,Fritz,Junior to quit for the simple reason that they get the feeling that they have no chance even to compete with free programs(even if they work hard and make something better than rybka2.2n2 in one year then Vas may release new free program that is stronger at that time).

Uri

I think this is the correct explanation. The release of Rybka 2.x as a free engine (not open source but free of charge) has the effect of killing most of the value of competing programs.

Now of course my interpretation is going to be interpreted as an attack.



// Christophe

[tiger]

From what I have read, the main reason for the elo jump in Rybka 3 from the already incredible R2.3.2a seems to be the improve in the evaluation made by L Kaufman.

He uses ultrafast games New Rybka vs Old Rybka, 1 second for game! So for example overnight he gets a lot of games where he can see very small increases in elo. Adding many new evaluation terms this way that add each a few elo points, you get a >100 elo jump



In this case it seems that evaluation was better than search. What is useful in ultra fast games is useful too for testing groups times



Regards.

I think Vas does testing better than any of us have done in the past. I cannot be absolutely sure about other programmers, but I'm 100% sure that he does much better than me.

Ultrafast games are going to be good to measure improvements in evaluation. In theory, 1 ply searches could be used to measure the evaluation, and that would be still effective.

Ultrafast games are not going to be as useful to measure improvements in search. For example a significant improvement in branching factor is going to be under the margin of error in ultrafast games, while it could provide a significant and measurable improvement in long time controls games.

I had underestimated the potential of a better evaluation (or my ability to improve my evaluation), so I have invested most of my time improving the search. But in order to measure improvements in search, as said above, you cannot use ultrafast games. You have to search 11..12 plies deep or more. This means the fastest you can play is like 1 minute per game per opponent. That is in the order of 100 times slower than game in one second as, reportedly, used by the Rybka team.

So in order to get the same accuracy than ultrafast games, instead of one night you would need 50 days to evaluate if any change made to the search is good or not.

It is not acceptable, so the only choice is to reduce the number of games, increasing dramatically the error margin of the result at the same time.

And so improving the search by small steps is really difficult because it is difficult to see any difference, even if there is some.

There is an interesting discussion at this time in the programming forum on the topic of testing engine changes.



// Christophe

[tiger]

I accept everything you have said, but let me correct myself. With one st of ideas I used a bad expression. yes, ideas does not come all at once from the beginning and are, later, exhausted along the time. Perhaps a more precise statement would be that we have a set of potential ideas embedded with the utmost deep levels of our brains, that can take lot of time to develope or sometimes never does.
No that these hiddeen ideas are ready as such. Not as ideas. It io difficult to explain; let us say that we have sme disposition to develope some sort of ideas. We can, maybe, call them heuristics, dormant alost all the time.
Now, if being truth you can be all your luife undigging those iodeas and putting them to work, the point is you will not ever go beyond the frame of those heuristics.
Am I wrong?
Hope so.
I am a writer, 9 books to date, and I hope that I am not merely doing new books about the esentially same stuff.
All the other reasons you name are real and powerful, but een so I expect you will do as you say it could be, just do it again.
This is like when we add reasons to reject a lady. One, two....N reasons and at last you again run to her feets....

My very best
fern

You are talking about a kind of "frame" that would limit the expansion of our understanding.

You are partly right because I know such frames exist. And the most interesting in the work I have done was that I had to move outside the frame in order to make any progress. I believe I have done that several times, and it is what made the work so exciting and revealing (in the sense that it revealed to myself that I could think outside the frames).

Chess programming is practically the only activity in my life that has required me to "think outside the frames".

Now it is well possible that there exist a frame around the ones I have already escaped, and this one would be the one you are talking about.

I also believe this "large frame" is mainly defined by education and religion. So keeping an open mind in both domains help widening that frame.

I'm still not very inclined to believe in your theory. Maybe just because I find it too much depressing!



// Christophe

[gerold]

Achieveements and Disciplines you have learned
in chess programing may just help you in about
any task you take on.

I for one would like to see you writting a new tiger.

Best to you,

Gerold.

P.S. Do you have a chess program for the Palm OS.

[tiger]

Achieveements and Disciplines you have learned
in chess programing may just help you in about
any task you take on.

I for one would like to see you writting a new tiger.

Best to you,

Gerold.

P.S. Do you have a chess program for the Palm OS.

Yes there is a version of Chess Tiger for PalmOS.



// Christophe

[Karmazen & Oliver]

<snipped>

... It had never happened in the past. Users think it's great, but I don't think so.
- ...
// Christophe

(even if they work hard and make something better than rybka2.2n2 in one year then Vas may release new free program that is stronger at that time).

Uri

I think this is the correct explanation. The release of Rybka 2.x as a free engine (not open source but free of charge) has the effect of killing most of the value of competing programs.

YES. of course...

- I do believe computer chess has changed for the worst. Strong open source programs have made the field less interesting for programmers by taking away the value of some ideas that took a long time for them to find and implement. But maybe it has made the field more interesting for users, so be it. However we have seen at the same time the emergence of bad behaviour that takes advantage of the initially generous idea of open source. We have seen obvious clones and we have also seen that open source code could be hijacked to serve personal interests, which is open source used against the spirit of open source. - ...

"... you shoot with pellet for wolves..."

OK, obviously, I neither think that the spirit of the opened code source should be good for personal lucre...

if you act ethically on open code you should maintain your open license, (for that initially parts of a programming skeleton already built), and but it is the case to reach an agreement with the original programmer...

Finally, free (but not open source) programs have been used as a way to kill the competition. It had never happened in the past. Users think it's great, but I don't think so.

OK... your shotgun has two shots...

1- spirit of open source...

2- not open source but free...

I think this is the correct explanation. The release of Rybka 2.x as a free engine (not open source but free of charge) has the effect of killing most of the value of competing programs ...

Now of course my interpretation is going to be interpreted as an attack.

// Christophe

I hope to understand it correctly, but I believe that you speak of 2 topics and they are two different topics, two good shots, I already told before you...

on one hand, the topic of using open code... ( fruit ?)

and on the other hand to use the old versions of programs proprietors like weapon , evidently you cannot compete against a price = 0.

1- spirit of open source... Strong open source programs ( fruit ? )

2- not open source but free of charge... (and I think that with more reason if this program leaves of a beginning of open code source...)

but? do I think? which is the surprise... if he/she is devoted exclusively to that need or work, the intention or the strategy is the law of the strongest, if in that way they can put an end to the competition... reason not?

in this world, always and in all the times it has always been tried to monopolize the market... I attempt it before chessbase and you had to compete in disadvantage in many occasions in front of other much more commercial programs

and now others try to maintain or to enlarge their market quota by force of exploding this with free" "cost or free

it is "the art of the war" by Sun Wu, applied to the business-chess...

Anyway, other people change way perhaps of thinking when in a future, even appear another program stronger and then the programmer can that he decides to loose it gratuitously...

it is evident that nobody remembers sacred Barbara, until it doesn't thunder...

for the user it is interesting, but if it is really necessary to be equal for the programmers, the option of open code should exist ...

I will put an example or simile, in some countries (Chinese, etc...) they use that same concept to acquire market quota, in terms of economy this calls you disloyal Competition... (=illegal competition (cars, clothes, clocks...)

when a country sells its products to a cost smaller than what has cost him when producing them, or they sells those products but cheap in the external market that in the interior market... it is not well seen speaking commercially.

in some occasions countries like USA, it has established tickets and sanctions in the imports against countries that they try to explode the market with a smaller sale cost that the production cost...

let us say that it is evident that the cost of producing R2nX is bigger than zero, therefore when "selling it" to cost zero and not to liberate the code (for example: fruit) you this making an ethical crime...

am I understood?

in other works... to enter in that dynamics is dangerous, ethically doubtful (because the initial code is free open source), but very effective short term...

as of short the term is? until another stronger program appears and pay with the same currency...

For user is interesting, OK. but

this it is my opinion and although it is considered as an attack it is what there is.. don´t problem... it is time of waiting.

bye. from Spain. Oliver.

postcript: the problem is that internet and the software don't seem to be subject to the market laws, that is something that it was necessary to regulate in the market laws

[tiger]

<snipped>

... It had never happened in the past. Users think it's great, but I don't think so.
- ...
// Christophe

(even if they work hard and make something better than rybka2.2n2 in one year then Vas may release new free program that is stronger at that time).

Uri

I think this is the correct explanation. The release of Rybka 2.x as a free engine (not open source but free of charge) has the effect of killing most of the value of competing programs.

YES. of course...

- I do believe computer chess has changed for the worst. Strong open source programs have made the field less interesting for programmers by taking away the value of some ideas that took a long time for them to find and implement. But maybe it has made the field more interesting for users, so be it. However we have seen at the same time the emergence of bad behaviour that takes advantage of the initially generous idea of open source. We have seen obvious clones and we have also seen that open source code could be hijacked to serve personal interests, which is open source used against the spirit of open source. - ...

"... you shoot with pellet for wolves..."

OK, obviously, I neither think that the spirit of the opened code source should be good for personal lucre...

if you act ethically on open code you should maintain your open license, (for that initially parts of a programming skeleton already built), and but it is the case to reach an agreement with the original programmer...

Finally, free (but not open source) programs have been used as a way to kill the competition. It had never happened in the past. Users think it's great, but I don't think so.

OK... your shotgun has two shots...

1- spirit of open source...

2- not open source but free...

I think this is the correct explanation. The release of Rybka 2.x as a free engine (not open source but free of charge) has the effect of killing most of the value of competing programs ...

Now of course my interpretation is going to be interpreted as an attack.

// Christophe

I hope to understand it correctly, but I believe that you speak of 2 topics and they are two different topics, two good shots, I already told before you...

on one hand, the topic of using open code... ( fruit ?)

and on the other hand to use the old versions of programs proprietors like weapon , evidently you cannot compete against a price = 0.

1- spirit of open source... Strong open source programs ( fruit ? )

2- not open source but free of charge... (and I think that with more reason if this program leaves of a beginning of open code source...)

but? do I think? which is the surprise... if he/she is devoted exclusively to that need or work, the intention or the strategy is the law of the strongest, if in that way they can put an end to the competition... reason not?

in this world, always and in all the times it has always been tried to monopolize the market... I attempt it before chessbase and you had to compete in disadvantage in many occasions in front of other much more commercial programs

and now others try to maintain or to enlarge their market quota by force of exploding this with free" "cost or free

it is "the art of the war" by Sun Wu, applied to the business-chess...

Anyway, other people change way perhaps of thinking when in a future, even appear another program stronger and then the programmer can that he decides to loose it gratuitously...

it is evident that nobody remembers sacred Barbara, until it doesn't thunder...

in other works... to enter in that dynamics is dangerous, ethically doubtful but very effective short term...

as of short the term is? until another stronger program appears and pay with the same currency...

this it is my opinion and although it is considered as an attack it is what there is.. don´t problem... it is time of waiting.

bye. from Spain. Oliver.

Your analysis is mostly correct.

I just wanted to point out the fact that giving a program for free in this particular context is an act of destruction aimed at other chess programmers.

The user's first thoughts are that it is good for them. They get a strong program for free.

But I know many users who used to appreciate the diversity and hard work produced when several talented programmers were able to fight in a competitive but still fair environment.

Think about Genius, Rebel, Fritz, Shredder, Junior, Hiarcs, Chess System Tal and many others. Do you remember that any of these programs have been at some point been given for free in an attempt to devaluate the interest in the competitors? I mean, Genius, Fritz or Shredder have all been in position, at some point, to give away for free the previous version, which was still stronger than any best version of any competitor.

But has it happened in the past? No it hasn't. The competitors had a sense of respect for each other.

What is expected now?

I expect users who used to appreciate the diversity to realize, later, too late, that diversity has been killed by an anti-competitive action that, as legal as it is, is in my opinion unethical.



// Christophe