GPL infringement

[Dr.Ex]

what do you think should be the end result if justice is served ? your a programmer and i know you must have a point of view on this matter .and if you have no personal opion then what are the possible outcomes ?

There are only two possibilities, if this proves to be true.

1. The source of Rybka has to be released (unlikely).

2. The source of Rybka will have to be completely cleaned up so that people inside the FSF verify that no GPL code remains.


I'm only interested to determine if it actually happened (copying code). I really don't care beyond that point. It is far harder to write a world-beater from scratch than to take a good program and make it even better (Toga comes to mind as one example). That's why I am interested, simply to determine which approach was used. It won't make a difference to most, but would for me.

Vas could have sent the source code of Rybka Beta 1.0 to a respected chess programming-savvy person long ago to prove his claims and end the discussion.
Why he doesn't is anyone's guess.
The secrets of it's former success are vastly revealed with the release of Strelka code anyway.

[tiger]

What exactly is "genuine AI"?

What is added to fruit

Of course. That is the reasoning that will render any investigation completely irrelevant.

- Show us the common parts between Fruit 2.1 and Rybka 1.0 in the "AI".
- OK, look at this.
- No no no. If it is in both programs it cannot be the AI because Rybka is stronger than Fruit. Show me another part.
(audience applauding)
...(loop ad nauseam)...

// Christophe

Christophe,

You're spending much time at the moment telling why further investigation is useless.

Maybe you don't get the point. I'm showing how absurd some reasoning is.

The arguments that have been given to brush away the possibility that Rybka 1.0 has started its life as Fruit 2.1 could be used to deny that any copyright violation could ever happen, in any case.

Absurd reasoning include:

- We can decide which parts of a program are important and which are not. If a part shows similarities with the same part of another program, let's just postulate that it is not an important part.
[ => I can take a scene from the movie Starwars and include it in my own movie as long as no important character appears ]

- One line of code cannot violate any copyright. Let's examine a program line by line and conclude that no line violates any copyright and so the program is perfectly clean.
[ => a movie is composed of pixel of various colors, none of these colors are protected by a copyright, so a movie cannot be protected by copyright ]

- If one program has more features than another (for example it is stronger) then it follows naturally that it cannot be a derivative work of the other one.
[ => Spielberg could take a few minutes from any lame movie and include it in Starwars ]


These absurd arguments have been used by several people including you, and actually you are the one who has been using all of them.

At the same time, after brushing away the first bits of evidence with the above absurd arguments, you have insisted that more evidence is provided. I guess they will go through the same absurdity mill.

We have a hard time convincing people with evidence because we are forced to show very technical parts to people who lack the necessary expertise. It is not meant as an elitist statement. We have tried to explain the evidence in non-technical terms as much as possible. Nobody has been excluded from the discussion on the basis that he was not a programmer. The choice of this forum and not the programming forum shows that nobody is excluded.

If the evidence shown is so weak, I guess it should be possible to argue against it on a true technical level. Instead, the absurd reasoning I have listed above is used against it. While it may be effective in deceiving people with less expertise or less experience in programming, it is still wrong.

I would encourage the readers to view the following refutations with a very critical eye:

- we can select the parts that are important
- we can dismiss lines one by one
- we can infer similarity by looking at features or strength

I think those who are defending the possibility that Rybka 1.0 is a derivative work of Fruit 2.1 would be able to accept that they are wrong. But certainly not when faced with the above deceptive arguments.



// Christophe

[GenoM]

what do you think should be the end result if justice is served ? your a programmer and i know you must have a point of view on this matter .and if you have no personal opion then what are the possible outcomes ?

There are only two possibilities, if this proves to be true.

1. The source of Rybka has to be released (unlikely).

2. The source of Rybka will have to be completely cleaned up so that people inside the FSF verify that no GPL code remains.


I'm only interested to determine if it actually happened (copying code). I really don't care beyond that point. It is far harder to write a world-beater from scratch than to take a good program and make it even better (Toga comes to mind as one example). That's why I am interested, simply to determine which approach was used. It won't make a difference to most, but would for me.

Vas could have sent the source code of Rybka Beta 1.0 to a respected chess programming-savvy person long ago to prove his claims and end the discussion.
Why he doesn't is anyone's guess.
The secrets of it's former success are vastly revealed with the release of Strelka code anyway.

I guess (because of the fact that Strelka isn't copy-paste work) Strelka isn't revealed the main secret of Rybka. The most important part of Rybka wasn't discovered in Strelka code, it seems.

[Guetti]

I guess (because of the fact that Strelka isn't copy-paste work) Strelka isn't revealed the main secret of Rybka. The most important part of Rybka wasn't discovered in Strelka code, it seems.

This would be an explanation. But then this most important part would have not much influence on playing strength?

Of course the other argument would be that he can not give the code of Rybka 1.0 beta to somebody to analyze because it contains GPL protected code.

[GenoM]

I guess (because of the fact that Strelka isn't copy-paste work) Strelka isn't revealed the main secret of Rybka. The most important part of Rybka wasn't discovered in Strelka code, it seems.

This would be an explanation. But then this most important part would have not much influence on playing strength?

Of course the other argument would be that he can not give the code of Rybka 1.0 beta to somebody to analyze because it contains GPL protected code.

Other possibility is that he may be don't want to give hints to competition (if ideas in undiscovered parts became very successful in the later versions of Rybka)?

[smirobth]

Maybe you don't get the point. I'm showing how absurd some reasoning is.

The arguments that have been given to brush away the possibility that Rybka 1.0 has started its life as Fruit 2.1 could be used to deny that any copyright violation could ever happen, in any case.

Absurd reasoning include:

- We can decide which parts of a program are important and which are not. If a part shows similarities with the same part of another program, let's just postulate that it is not an important part.
[ => I can take a scene from the movie Starwars and include it in my own movie as long as no important character appears ]

- One line of code cannot violate any copyright. Let's examine a program line by line and conclude that no line violates any copyright and so the program is perfectly clean.
[ => a movie is composed of pixel of various colors, none of these colors are protected by a copyright, so a movie cannot be protected by copyright ]

- If one program has more features than another (for example it is stronger) then it follows naturally that it cannot be a derivative work of the other one.
[ => Spielberg could take a few minutes from any lame movie and include it in Starwars ]


These absurd arguments have been used by several people including you, and actually you are the one who has been using all of them.

At the same time, after brushing away the first bits of evidence with the above absurd arguments, you have insisted that more evidence is provided. I guess they will go through the same absurdity mill.

We have a hard time convincing people with evidence because we are forced to show very technical parts to people who lack the necessary expertise. It is not meant as an elitist statement. We have tried to explain the evidence in non-technical terms as much as possible. Nobody has been excluded from the discussion on the basis that he was not a programmer. The choice of this forum and not the programming forum shows that nobody is excluded.

If the evidence shown is so weak, I guess it should be possible to argue against it on a true technical level. Instead, the absurd reasoning I have listed above is used against it. While it may be effective in deceiving people with less expertise or less experience in programming, it is still wrong.

I would encourage the readers to view the following refutations with a very critical eye:

- we can select the parts that are important
- we can dismiss lines one by one
- we can infer similarity by looking at features or strength

I think those who are defending the possibility that Rybka 1.0 is a derivative work of Fruit 2.1 would be able to accept that they are wrong. But certainly not when faced with the above deceptive arguments.

// Christophe

This is my first entry into this discussion, which I take with great trepidation.

Chris, even though I am a novice programmer and most of the technical discussion sails way over my head, I get the impression you make some good arguments. But you didn't mention what I suspect is perhaps the most important argument:

If Fabien Letouzey doesn't care, and if the FSF doesn't care, then why should anyone else care? To use your Star Wars movie analogy, if someone makes a spoof movie called "Star Bars", and in their movie they insert a brief clip from the Star Wars bar scene, but George Lucas (not Spielberg, wrong producer/director) doesn't care, and 20th Century Fox doesn't care, then why should we care?

[kranium]

If Fabien Letouzey doesn't care, and if the FSF doesn't care, then why should anyone else care? To use your Star Wars movie analogy, if someone makes a spoof movie called "Star Bars", and in their movie they insert a brief clip from the Star Wars bar scene, but George Lucas (not Spielberg, wrong producer/director) doesn't care, and 20th Century Fox doesn't care, then why should we care?

Hi Robin,
as far as i know, the FSF is unaware of this discussion...
i know i didn't contact them.
we have only a verdict from the court of public opinion.

[tiger]

Maybe you don't get the point. I'm showing how absurd some reasoning is.

The arguments that have been given to brush away the possibility that Rybka 1.0 has started its life as Fruit 2.1 could be used to deny that any copyright violation could ever happen, in any case.

Absurd reasoning include:

- We can decide which parts of a program are important and which are not. If a part shows similarities with the same part of another program, let's just postulate that it is not an important part.
[ => I can take a scene from the movie Starwars and include it in my own movie as long as no important character appears ]

- One line of code cannot violate any copyright. Let's examine a program line by line and conclude that no line violates any copyright and so the program is perfectly clean.
[ => a movie is composed of pixel of various colors, none of these colors are protected by a copyright, so a movie cannot be protected by copyright ]

- If one program has more features than another (for example it is stronger) then it follows naturally that it cannot be a derivative work of the other one.
[ => Spielberg could take a few minutes from any lame movie and include it in Starwars ]


These absurd arguments have been used by several people including you, and actually you are the one who has been using all of them.

At the same time, after brushing away the first bits of evidence with the above absurd arguments, you have insisted that more evidence is provided. I guess they will go through the same absurdity mill.

We have a hard time convincing people with evidence because we are forced to show very technical parts to people who lack the necessary expertise. It is not meant as an elitist statement. We have tried to explain the evidence in non-technical terms as much as possible. Nobody has been excluded from the discussion on the basis that he was not a programmer. The choice of this forum and not the programming forum shows that nobody is excluded.

If the evidence shown is so weak, I guess it should be possible to argue against it on a true technical level. Instead, the absurd reasoning I have listed above is used against it. While it may be effective in deceiving people with less expertise or less experience in programming, it is still wrong.

I would encourage the readers to view the following refutations with a very critical eye:

- we can select the parts that are important
- we can dismiss lines one by one
- we can infer similarity by looking at features or strength

I think those who are defending the possibility that Rybka 1.0 is a derivative work of Fruit 2.1 would be able to accept that they are wrong. But certainly not when faced with the above deceptive arguments.

// Christophe

This is my first entry into this discussion, which I take with great trepidation.

Chris, even though I am a novice programmer and most of the technical discussion sails way over my head, I get the impression you make some good arguments. But you didn't mention what I suspect is perhaps the most important argument:

If Fabien Letouzey doesn't care, and if the FSF doesn't care, then why should anyone else care? To use your Star Wars movie analogy, if someone makes a spoof movie called "Star Bars", and in their movie they insert a brief clip from the Star Wars bar scene, but George Lucas (not Spielberg, wrong producer/director) doesn't care, and 20th Century Fox doesn't care, then why should we care?

Because if you do not care, then don't complain when someone steals your own code.

It would have been good to know if people were actually concerned by fairness in computer chess.

It is wrong to say that the copyright owner does not care. The FSF is entitled to take legal actions, as Fabien as given his copyright to them, but they will probably not step in until they receive enough information about the possible violation.



// Christophe

[bob]

Maybe you don't get the point. I'm showing how absurd some reasoning is.

The arguments that have been given to brush away the possibility that Rybka 1.0 has started its life as Fruit 2.1 could be used to deny that any copyright violation could ever happen, in any case.

Absurd reasoning include:

- We can decide which parts of a program are important and which are not. If a part shows similarities with the same part of another program, let's just postulate that it is not an important part.
[ => I can take a scene from the movie Starwars and include it in my own movie as long as no important character appears ]

- One line of code cannot violate any copyright. Let's examine a program line by line and conclude that no line violates any copyright and so the program is perfectly clean.
[ => a movie is composed of pixel of various colors, none of these colors are protected by a copyright, so a movie cannot be protected by copyright ]

- If one program has more features than another (for example it is stronger) then it follows naturally that it cannot be a derivative work of the other one.
[ => Spielberg could take a few minutes from any lame movie and include it in Starwars ]


These absurd arguments have been used by several people including you, and actually you are the one who has been using all of them.

At the same time, after brushing away the first bits of evidence with the above absurd arguments, you have insisted that more evidence is provided. I guess they will go through the same absurdity mill.

We have a hard time convincing people with evidence because we are forced to show very technical parts to people who lack the necessary expertise. It is not meant as an elitist statement. We have tried to explain the evidence in non-technical terms as much as possible. Nobody has been excluded from the discussion on the basis that he was not a programmer. The choice of this forum and not the programming forum shows that nobody is excluded.

If the evidence shown is so weak, I guess it should be possible to argue against it on a true technical level. Instead, the absurd reasoning I have listed above is used against it. While it may be effective in deceiving people with less expertise or less experience in programming, it is still wrong.

I would encourage the readers to view the following refutations with a very critical eye:

- we can select the parts that are important
- we can dismiss lines one by one
- we can infer similarity by looking at features or strength

I think those who are defending the possibility that Rybka 1.0 is a derivative work of Fruit 2.1 would be able to accept that they are wrong. But certainly not when faced with the above deceptive arguments.

// Christophe

This is my first entry into this discussion, which I take with great trepidation.

Chris, even though I am a novice programmer and most of the technical discussion sails way over my head, I get the impression you make some good arguments. But you didn't mention what I suspect is perhaps the most important argument:

If Fabien Letouzey doesn't care, and if the FSF doesn't care, then why should anyone else care? To use your Star Wars movie analogy, if someone makes a spoof movie called "Star Bars", and in their movie they insert a brief clip from the Star Wars bar scene, but George Lucas (not Spielberg, wrong producer/director) doesn't care, and 20th Century Fox doesn't care, then why should we care?

Here's the reason. How would beginners feel if they spend months getting their first program written and running, and then decide to compete in a CCT or whatever, only to discover that most everybody copied program X and started off at 2600+ from day one, where he/she took months to break 2400?

That is the issue. Less copying encourages more participation, because not everyone gets a thrill out of stealing code and using that to compete, most of us would rather use what we wrote ourselves, so that there is a feeling of accomplishment if we do well.

[smirobth]

This is my first entry into this discussion, which I take with great trepidation.

Chris, even though I am a novice programmer and most of the technical discussion sails way over my head, I get the impression you make some good arguments. But you didn't mention what I suspect is perhaps the most important argument:

If Fabien Letouzey doesn't care, and if the FSF doesn't care, then why should anyone else care? To use your Star Wars movie analogy, if someone makes a spoof movie called "Star Bars", and in their movie they insert a brief clip from the Star Wars bar scene, but George Lucas (not Spielberg, wrong producer/director) doesn't care, and 20th Century Fox doesn't care, then why should we care?

Because if you do not care, then don't complain when someone steals your own code.

I reserve the right to complain if someone steals my code, but I also reserve the right to not care if someone steals it.

It would have been good to know if people were actually concerned by fairness in computer chess.

I am concerned by fairness in computer chess, but I might perhaps have a slightly different idea from you of what is and is not fair. In fact I haven't even made up my mind yet regarding what is fair or not fair in this debate. Two separate questions regarding fairness remain unresolved in my mind:
1) Is it fair to borrow small snippets of GPL code if the code author and FSF do not object? I don't know, but the way I am leaning right now is that it is probably not totally fair, but also perhaps not that big a deal since ideas can't be protected and therefore the code itself could be modified (probably without too much difficulty(?) since we aren't, AFAIK, talking about any complicated ideas or engine code) to bring it into compliance. At least that is my neophyte understanding.
2) Is it fair to conduct "research" into license violations by posting in a public forum in a manner that tends to imply a chess programmer is a code thief? Again I don't know, but the way I am leaning right now is that this, too, is perhaps not totally fair. My reasoning is that there is not a lot that can be accomplished in a public forum that could not be accomplished in private; while if the allegations should (however unlikely that might appear to you in this specific case) turn out to be unfounded, the damage would already be done.

It is wrong to say that the copyright owner does not care. The FSF is entitled to take legal actions, as Fabien as given his copyright to them, but they will probably not step in until they receive enough information about the possible violation.

This seems to be your best argument against the original point I made, IMO. And if the FSF does decide to step in, then that point becomes moot. But what will happen if, after the FSF receives enough information, they decide to take no action?