ethical dilemma

[GenoM]

It's a line of typical for the new-born (or re-born) fans of computer chess behaviour -- exclusively fans of Rybka. For them there is no other authorities but their Vasik... Sad.

[frosch]

you are funny.

come on, I wanna here it again (only for me the newbie):

what is the name of the engine, that is the very basis for rybka?
is strelka based on rybka? yes or no? you already had different opinions about that...
for what is the display of nodecount and search depth important?

if you awnser these 3 more or less random questions precisely, I might reply, but I wont waste my time to the same extend as you obviously do.

[GenoM]

you are funny.

come on, I wanna here it again (only for me the newbie):

what is the name of the engine, that is the very basis for rybka?
is strelka based on rybka? yes or no? you already had different opinions about that...
for what is the display of nodecount and search depth important?

if you awnser these 3 more or less random questions precisely, I might reply, but I wont waste my time to the same extend as you obviously do.

No, I will not answer you. New-born should be happy without my answers, I guess.

[Rolf]

you are funny.

come on, I wanna here it again (only for me the newbie):

what is the name of the engine, that is the very basis for rybka?
is strelka based on rybka? yes or no? you already had different opinions about that...
for what is the display of nodecount and search depth important?

if you awnser these 3 more or less random questions precisely, I might reply, but I wont waste my time to the same extend as you obviously do.

No, I will not answer you. New-born should be happy without my answers, I guess.

I thought this is a public forum and even if you dont wish to answer him, please answer the relevant questions for all members. Or dont you have any answers at all? Please take Corbit as a role model who also admits something in short answers. I dont know who Horst is but his question were right on the point. Juswt like those from you and sidorov. But you got answers, no?

[GenoM]

if you awnser these 3 more or less random questions precisely, I might reply, but I wont waste my time to the same extend as you obviously do.

No, I will not answer you. New-born should be happy without my answers, I guess.

I thought this is a public forum and even if you dont wish to answer him, please answer the relevant questions for all members. Or dont you have any answers at all? Please take Corbit as a role model who also admits something in short answers. I dont know who Horst is but his question were right on the point. Juswt like those from you and sidorov. But you got answers, no?

I got what I want to, Rolf. I have all the answers in the world but I will not share them with Horst because of a simple reason. Cause just like he does I don't want to waste my time explaining things that new-born a priori couldn't understand. Is my point clear?

[Rolf]

if you awnser these 3 more or less random questions precisely, I might reply, but I wont waste my time to the same extend as you obviously do.

No, I will not answer you. New-born should be happy without my answers, I guess.

I thought this is a public forum and even if you dont wish to answer him, please answer the relevant questions for all members. Or dont you have any answers at all? Please take Corbit as a role model who also admits something in short answers. I dont know who Horst is but his question were right on the point. Juswt like those from you and sidorov. But you got answers, no?

I got what I want to, Rolf. I have all the answers in the world but I will not share them with Horst because of a simple reason. Cause just like he does I don't want to waste my time explaining things that new-born a priori couldn't understand. Is my point clear?

Who new-born?

[bob]

If you don't see the difference between finding a specific sequence of moves, not yet used, and what I discussed, then so be it. But the differences between the two concepts would overflow the grand canyon...

And it boggles my mind that this actually happens, in fact...

What boggles me is that you as someone who lives from also public money in your university that allowed you a living, that you deny this with an own business to Vasik. How do you justify that double standard? You even became Wch with lend machines from the industry. Do you want to pretend that you were the only one who could cope with these machines? What do you advise Vas to do? Playing Black Jack in Vegas? What is consistent reasoning in your eyes? <sigh>

what "double standard" am I denying? I received plenty of help from early computer chess programmers. I've given plenty of help to current computer chess programmers. What I don't like is for someone to "act like an amateur" and then "go commercial". I doubt that was a last-minute decision. And had I been told of some of the commercial intentions, I can think of _lots_ of discussions I would have avoided. That's my complaint. I don't care who writes a program for sale. But do it openly and up front. Then I have the choice of whether to assist someone with a commercial development project or not...

that was, and is, my point...

[bob]

I don't believe there is any existing algorithm used in computer chess that could not be re-invented from scratch. That should actually be intuitively obvious. But would you not agree that by "standing on the shoulders of others" you get a great boost with little effort?

I only wish most could have been around in the days of greenblatt (mack hack), kozdrowicki (coko), slate (chess 4.x/nuchess), Thompson (multiple versions of belle with and without hardware), Truscott/Wright (duchess), Schwartz (chaos), dan/kathe spracklen (multiple programs), Newborn (ostrich), Marsland (awit), Wendroff (lachex), Donskly (Kaissa), Scherzer (Bebe), Beal (program + papers), Kittinger (wchess among others), and a great number of others too numerous to mention. They all worked in a spirit of mutual benefit. And computer chess greatly benefitted. Some still work in that spirit today, no need to name them as most know who they are. But some do not. If someone works in a closet to develop an engine, more power to them. Even if they use published information, fine. But to ask dozens of questions, send hundreds of emails, and then disappear? A bit much, IMHO. If someone were to email me and say "I am thinking of doing a commercial chess program, will you answer these questions to get me started?" My answer would be "no"...

A concrete question then.

a) Did Vasik do this to you?

He did it to quite a few in fact. You can find old discussions on various topics here..

b) How could you be invited to do this? Mentioning your ideas or help? How far you could be publicly called a help to a commercial program?

Don't understand that question...

c) Please what should people do who want to be creative and still want to have a living, Bob? Who dont have a job as a professor?

Again, I don't understand what you mean? Do you think that _only_ university professors can develop chess programs that are not commercial? What about Bruce (ferret)? Stanback (zarkov)? Slate (nuchess)? warnock (lachex)? Scherzer (Bebe), Thompson (Belle)? The list goes on and on, and none of the above were academically developed...

And above all? What do you want right now? Being a public institution in a field isnt enough for you? Could Vasik become a sort of assistent for you with a university job? That would be great. Not knowing if he would want to do that. But speak it out in honest - you've always given your word. Why do you speak with so many insinuations between the lines. In the case of Vas I know for sure, and others have confirmed this, that he's among the business programmer the one with the most intensive feedback back and thro. As I said, he's comparable to you. Any other, Ban, SMK, take who you want, are like autists in comparison.

What "insinuations"??? I have been very specific. I have two things I don't like. Commercial programmers lurk here, and occasionally pick up on new ideas and incorporate them into their programs, offering nothing in return. Not much can be done about that except to have some discussions in private, which many of us do in fact...

The second is for someone to jump in, ask for help, reach a mature point with the development, then find a new idea and run and hide with it. It's bad for computer chess. Where would we be if _everyone_ had to discover null-move by themselves, rather than having Beal's original paper to work from? What about Slate/Atkin's paper in Chess Skill? Does everyone need to discover bitboards by themselves? What about alpha/beta which is not exactly obvious unless you are heavily into AI and tree searching. What about search extensions? And then reductions? The "openness" of the past 40 years led to greatly accelerated development. Most anyone can put together a 2600 program with a year or two of steady work. Because of the wealth of published information describing most of the important features of a good engine.

So those are my two main issues... For the former, we could just stop public discussion, although one would still be subject to a current amateur "going commercial". For the latter, there is little that can be done. Eventually everything gets exposed after a lot of hard work by someone re-discovers the idea. But it is a time-waster. I probably started the "bitboard revolution" 12 years or so ago, although I certainly didn't invent them. But I found a new way of using them that made them far more efficient than previously done. And I made it public instantly. Who would have guessed that the "magic" development would add even more advantages to the idea? But not if someone else had to come up with rotated bitboards first, to make them fast enough that lots of people started playing around with them. That led to what we are using today, and who knows what it will lead to in the future? But clearly nothing if it was not originally disclosed to start the evolutionary trail...

[bob]

Has Vas patented his new ideas? If not, there will never be a law suit because there is no infringement. Reverse-engineering infringement suits depend on the pre-existing patent to form the basis for the infringement. There is clearly no copyright issue if actual original code is not copied. In fact, US patent/copyright laws are very clear in what can be copyrighted and what has to be patented...

I don't believe that you are correct in the above.

I am certain that I am. I have to deal with copyright attorney stuff on a regular basis...

I deal with IP attorneys frequently and have been involved in IP cases. I would like to know if your attorneys claim that the presence of source code is a mandatory requirement for copyright infringement. My attorneys have never said such thing and in fact I was asked to render an opinion on disassembled code without ever seeing the original source code. It is possible that your attorneys are better than mine and so I would love to know of a verdict (after all attorneys are bound by the judgments) that states that "source code similarity is the only way to assert copyright infringement in a software case".
The link I provided includes a number of cases where copyright infringement was asserted (and granted) without having anything to do with the original source code.

Yes. How can you copyright an "idea"? There is no copyright law to support that. That's where a patent comes into play. Otherwise what are you going to base a copyright claim on? Copyright _specifically_ applies to something written and then copied and used by someone else. Most notably in literature, but also in media derived from such (movies, recordings, etc)...

Until one stops to determine if there is any borrowed code in Rybka. Which was claimed by Vas to have come from fruit.

Robert,
the law doesn't work that way, at least not from what I have been exposed to. We cannot indemnify one illegal action by suggesting that there was something "illegal" beforehand.

I didn't mean to imply that you could. You can't use the defense "but everybody else was speeding too" for that very reason. But to win a case, one has to convince someone of wrongdoing (usually). If the original work was a copy itself, then it is hard to exert copyright for something that you didn't write in the first place. So the original author becomes the only one with copyright for the thing...

Strelka is legal or illegal regardless of how Rybka was created.
(putative example: "I killed him because I think he killed someone else" is not a good or acceptable defense -- you are going to get the chair.)

Literal and non-literal copies (with respect to original source code or binary output) are both subject to copyright violations. If there is disassembled code found in the Strelka (1.x - 2.x) that can be shown to have been taken from Rybka executable then the copyright infringement is a very likely outcome.

I don't believe that will hold up in any court unless there is _MAJOR_ stuff copied in that matter. A good attorney would start pointing out the _differences_. And the courts have been very clear about trying to copyright algorithms, which they do not allow...Perhaps if you could show that major parts were copied, you might make headway. But if you discover that a program uses rotated bitboards, or now magic bitboards, which have huge blocks of similar constants, how could you claim copyright on a series of numbers that could be computed by anyone? The basic answer is it can't be done...

The courts have been _very_ precise in their dealing with software patent infringement. It is the "idea" that gets patented. For copyright, it is the actual text (or in this case program source code). reverse-engineering cases have _always_ revolved around patents, not copyright. There's no hope of pursuing a copyright infringement if you can't detail exactly what was copied.

But you can ... the disassembled code.

Robert,
the "idea vs expression" is a non-sequitur in this case. No one is seeking protection of the idea, instead we are talking about how the 'idea' was obtained.

uot;]

/quote]

That's my point. If the "idea" was patented, then this might have a shot. But otherwise, it looks unwinnable...

It is not legal to disassemble a program and then assemble it again and claim copyright on the result and avoid the copyrights associated with the original -- even if you have never seen the code that produced the original binary.

It depends on what he actually did. It is certainly not illegal to disassemble a program. There's no law regarding that period. Taking the assembly language result and calling it your own is a very grey area that would cost a fortune to litigate, and likely would ultimately if he could show that he modified it extensively. Just as the program he copied had its roots elsewhere...

I don't believe that it would cost a fortune if it can be shown that he disassembled the program with the intent to obtain the idea contained therein. (just my opinion)

You keep repeating that "the original software" [Rybka] had its roots somewhere else ... but that is completely irrelevant to the act of stealing the ideas that are unique to Rybka.

Actually it isn't. It means the original author is the one that was damaged. As in You write a book, I copy it, then somebody copies mine and I sue them for copyright infringement. I have no chance...

It is illegal (in vast majority of the cases) to integrate machine executable code into your own application, without being given the explicit permission to do so.

That is a pure copyright issue. As you are copying a program in its entirety, what we are talking about is something far different.

If you read the link [paper] that I linked to, you will see that this is not the case, i.e. the program was not copied in its entirety.

Anyway,
copyright issues are often more complex than what we believe them to be.

http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/WebTable.htm

Among a copyright owner's exclusive rights is the right “to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work.” 17 U.S.C. § 106(2). If, as we hold, the speeded-up Galaxian game that a licensee creates with a circuit board supplied by the defendant is a derivative work based upon Galaxian, a licensee who lacks the plaintiff's authorization to create a derivative work is a direct infringer and the defendant is a contributory infringer through its sale of the speeded-up circuit board.

Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act defines a derivative work as “a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.”

... source code is not necessary to have a copyright infringement.

Regards,
Hristo

I agree. But it is impossible to claim someone derived something from your work, if they can prove you derived yours from something else pre-existing. Now your copyright or patent is invalid...

As I said, expensive with no likely success...

If there is evidence of disassembled code [from Rybka] in Strelka the chance for success is 99% ... but it will be expensive (not quite a fortune, though ).

Regards,
Hristo

[Uri Blass]

If you don't see the difference between finding a specific sequence of moves, not yet used, and what I discussed, then so be it. But the differences between the two concepts would overflow the grand canyon...

And it boggles my mind that this actually happens, in fact...

What boggles me is that you as someone who lives from also public money in your university that allowed you a living, that you deny this with an own business to Vasik. How do you justify that double standard? You even became Wch with lend machines from the industry. Do you want to pretend that you were the only one who could cope with these machines? What do you advise Vas to do? Playing Black Jack in Vegas? What is consistent reasoning in your eyes? <sigh>

what "double standard" am I denying? I received plenty of help from early computer chess programmers. I've given plenty of help to current computer chess programmers. What I don't like is for someone to "act like an amateur" and then "go commercial". I doubt that was a last-minute decision. And had I been told of some of the commercial intentions, I can think of _lots_ of discussions I would have avoided. That's my complaint. I don't care who writes a program for sale. But do it openly and up front. Then I have the choice of whether to assist someone with a commercial development project or not...

that was, and is, my point...

I think that you can expect most people to try to sell their chess program if it becomes strong enough and your assumption should be that they are going to sell their program if they find something that make it stronger than other programs unless they say the opposite.

They may not know if their program is going to be strong enough in the time that they ask questions.

I think that commercial programmers clearly help computer chess because they release exe file that it is possible to learn from it so it is not correct that they give nothing.

If you want them to give more then it then you need some sponsor to pay money for their source code(I am sure that commercial programmers will have no objection to release their source if universities give them enough money for it).

Uri