Ippolit questions

[Graham Banks]

I would guess 50% of players on Playchess have downloaded commercial engines for free. Loads of Clones deleted from Playchess, in the last week, but clear instructions posted on a German forum on how to rename it as Rybka 3 - kind of funny if they do that as someone went to all that trouble to make a clone and then have the engine renamed as Rybka 3.

The human brain is a complex thing, and not everybody is wired correctly.

[gerold]

Nobody had heard of this clone till last week when it was advertised here although it was known to a few.

Yes i also wonder about this. Why now? Although there should be some time anyway but i wonder if there was something particular reason for this time.

I will search of who did the first post here about Ippolit. He perhaps will know why he posted that and where he did heard about it and why he decided to post it this time.
Do you happen to know who was it and get me out of trouble?

Yes The most striking thing I think is that the people who made it sent Vas regular updates by email of their progress.

Really? Why do you think that?
Do you happen to know Vas opinion about it when he was receiving the emails? I find it extremely bizarre this to happen. Not that there is something in this case that seems logical.

No I don't know who made the 1st post. Vas did not mention it at the time as, rightly, he thought no publicity was best. However the Cloners were so proud of what they were doing in decompiling his code that that they thought they should send him regular updates.

Maybe Vas will decide to share some of these gems!?

the hackers were even kind enough to keep me updated via email.

Vas

I wonder if the CCC Charter would allow commercial authors to get this much free advertising here?

You may as well allow the links, as you allow people to suggest what to google, and put in the CCC Charter that our mission is to drive all honest commercial authors out of business.

the "Pro-Linkage" faction will be happy to number you amongst their
numbers
Steve

Glad to see the moderators take it seriously.

yes
its been a real disco party for us
i would guess that my PM's-Emails are roughly equally divided
50%-allow links or we are suppressing free speech
50%-squelch all open discussion as we are promoting piracy
Steve

This engine has been worked on for awhile now.
Is it ok to post the forum that has the link to download
this engine.

Best to all.

Gerold.

P.S. Tony has it posted for awhile but i don;t think i would go
there.

[gerold]

no links thanks.

[tmokonen]

Nobody had heard of this clone till last week when it was advertised here although it was known to a few.

I guess the rec.games.chess.politics usenet group must really be dead, because that's where I first saw the source to this program, months ago.

[M ANSARI]

All this dishonesty and deception in computer chess sometimes makes me wonder why I bother to continue with the hobby.
I guess I know now how some of the honest programmers feel, and why some get disillusioned to the point of giving it away.

I agree. I just hope this does not discourage the programmers enough that they throw in the towel. Computer chess has still a ways to go and there is plenty of improvement left, while the amateur programmers have come a long way, it is great to have programmers working on chess engines professionally to push the envelope. If their work can be stolen with impunity, that would indeed be discouraging. Hopefully they will not give up and continue to push the envelope and will always be one step ahead.