wgarvin wrote:michiguel wrote:Irrelevant, there was plenty of investigation coming in after that fact was known by you. Just reading the post it become obvious. You should have recused right there.
Miguel
Why? Bob wasn't the judge or jury -- the closest analogue to that was the ICGA Board. Bob was part of the Secretariat of the panel. He had seen most of the evidence before the panel even formed, so of course he already had an opinion about whether Vas had broken the rules or not.
That is why he should have recused. Being in the panel is fine, being in charge of writing the report is a different story. Once he knows Crafty is or even may be in R1.6, he has conflict of interests. It is _exactly_ as Fabien Letouzey being in the secretariat. You may agree that would not look well.
But I didn't see him trying to sway the other members of the panel with his opinions. Actually I don't remember him even mentioning his opinion during the panel discussions, with one exception: when we were polled for our votes about whether we had read the evidence and whether we believed that Rybka had violated Rule 2, Bob gave his vote and his opinion just as a dozen other people did.
That is not the point. Things should be clean and look clean for a variety of reasons. Not only justice is important, but also sense of justice. BH could have stayed totally silent in the process, but his mere presence is a problem after the R1.6/Crafty issue and the ability to write the report. Even if I put my VIG glasses, the report was not written fairly (IMHO). It was prosecutorial more than investigative. Maybe he was not in charge of that, but maybe he did not realize it was prosecutorial. Another person could have stepped in and intervene. Many times you interfere by omission rather than direct intervention. I am not saying this is what happened, but it is just a speculation to illustrate that the community deserved a process where all these doubts were completely cleared out.
My own opinion is that there's no reasonable doubt that Vas did violate Rule 2. I didn't form my opinion by reading the opinions of Bob or anyone else -- I formed my opinion by reading the evidence, examining the annotated disassemblies, and comparing their semantics to the Fruit source code. Even if Bob had felt for some reason that he needed to recuse himself, I'm pretty sure it would not have changed the outcome at all.
Possibly, but we will never know if a final report could have been less harsh, the impression on the ICGA less severe, the punishment less draconian, the sense of justice deeper, and the acceptance of the verdict broader.
Miguel, in retrospect I do wish that you had been on the panel, and Ed too, because you both would have had some interesting points to raise, e.g. about the PST evidence. It honestly was not a witch-hunt, the whole point was to figure out as best as possible the truth of what had happened, or at least to weigh the significance of the evidence that had been dug up. And I know you have concerns about a few parts of that evidence. At the very least, I think it would have avoided some of the brouhaha that came afterwards.
I hope you'll consider participating if there are any more cases like this (Loop/Fruit ?)
Not likely with the current composition of the secretariat. I said this before, I am not making this up now. But, I appreciate the comment. Maybe you should be in the secretariat...
Miguel
