Sloppy 0.1.1 released

[revengeska]

If authors who are making open source programs find good, solid open source code and want to use it, what's the problem? There's no sense in reinventing the wheel.

This idea of yours that a open source program is a clone because it borrows source code legally from another open source program is absolute bullshit. Sloppy is not Toga and Toga is not Fruit, the playing strengths and styles are much different from each other and include their own code.

By this logic, you're telling me that Whiskey, Beer, and Martinis are all the same because they all contain alchohol. Go see how many people would agree with that.

[revengeska]

I think it's a GREAT thing you decided to open up your code, I'm in full support. You've taken a lot of unwarranted heat for Sloppy, only by doing the things that nobody in the open source community thinks twice about.

Just as with here, open source developers take a lot of flak from proprietary developers who take the harder(and in some cases more senseless) route of writing their own code, because they can't use the open source code legally(because of the various licenses provided to protect open source). Improving already strong code and adding your own to make it unique is the whole idea of open source, don't forget that. As long as credit is given where it's due(and you have seem to), it's only a good thing. There's no point to open source if you can't borrow other open source code, and other people can't borrow yours. Then you're just stuck with a proprietary program whose code people can see.

So in short, thanks for the contribution! Don't let these people get you down. We have to resist this abuse just like the open source community is resisting Microsoft's claim that Linux violates their patents(but doesn't state which ones). Much good comes out of collaborate effort from developers, and I hope this is preserved.

[Dann Corbit]

But I have no problem with Sloppy and its honest author, everybody can decide wether he wants to use Sloppy or not.

Best,
Alex

True...I agree. It is in full sight and that he hides nothing. Why he needs the Fruit/Toga eval is the part I dont get? If he wanted to enter serious competition that would need to be changed.

Finally, we partly agree. Again, let me quote myself from the thread at the Winboard forum:

But, in your opinion (engine authors, tournament directors, and other people), should Sloppy be allowed to play in tournaments ?

I'm not going to enter Sloppy to any tournaments myself, but if people want to include it in their own tournaments, why shouldn't they?

So yeah, I'm not going to enter serious competition. Actually Sloppy is just one of the many computer programs I've written, it's nothing special. A year or two from now I'll probably be working on something completely different.

Q: What do we find here:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/~ilaripih/sloppy/download.html

A: We find source code.

Q: Is Fruit 2.1 a GPL engine?

A: Yes, Fruit 2.1 is a GPL engine.

Q: Is it valid to use code from a GPL engine if your engine is also open source?

A: Yes, it is totally valid to use that code. In fact, that was the INTENT of the original author.

Dann's own notes:
The 'sloppy' engine is full of original and interesting ideas. It is the only chess program I have seen that uses an AVL tree.

Clearly, Sloppy is "less of a clone" than Toga. I guess that there are still people who have a problem with Toga, but I can see no reasonable reason to take issue with Sloppy.

IMO-YMMV.

[Dann Corbit]

I think I can understand the tables above. If these are "secrets" of a chess program and I don't use them or learn from them, others will. Like Bob Hyatt, Vasik ,Friz Morten, Chrilly Donninger,Mayer Kahler.

Rasjid

Learn all you want. I think that's why they are out there. Copy them verbatum? That is a somewhat different concept.

Well put it this way.....by your own logic you better steal everything thats not nailed down around you before someone else does.

Are you saying that those authors are thieves?

Yes or no will suffice as an answer......



Christopher

Almost every program has a piece square table.
Do you think that every constant in a piece square table was independently researched and calculated from first principles?

Every single program uses either an alpha beta search or MTD(f) or a variant of those (in fact, they are proven to belong to the same class by a research paper). Anyway, only one person invented alpha/beta and only one person invented MTD(f) but everyone uses them.

I will state that there is no shame whatsoever in using someone else's idea, unless you claim that it was your invention or unless you have violated some agreement in doing so.

The author of Sloppy has done absolutely nothing wrong. Not morally, not academically, not scientifically. The way he did things is the way that you are *supposed* to do them.

Quite frankly, the clone hunters are a far bigger problem than the cloners are.

[Uri Blass]

I think I can understand the tables above. If these are "secrets" of a chess program and I don't use them or learn from them, others will. Like Bob Hyatt, Vasik ,Friz Morten, Chrilly Donninger,Mayer Kahler.

Rasjid

Learn all you want. I think that's why they are out there. Copy them verbatum? That is a somewhat different concept.

Well put it this way.....by your own logic you better steal everything thats not nailed down around you before someone else does.

Are you saying that those authors are thieves?

Yes or no will suffice as an answer......



Christopher

Almost every program has a piece square table.
Do you think that every constant in a piece square table was independently researched and calculated from first principles?

Every single program uses either an alpha beta search or MTD(f) or a variant of those (in fact, they are proven to belong to the same class by a research paper). Anyway, only one person invented alpha/beta and only one person invented MTD(f) but everyone uses them.

I will state that there is no shame whatsoever in using someone else's idea, unless you claim that it was your invention or unless you have violated some agreement in doing so.

The author of Sloppy has done absolutely nothing wrong. Not morally, not academically, not scientifically. The way he did things is the way that you are *supposed* to do them.

Quite frankly, the clone hunters are a far bigger problem than the cloners are.

I do not think that the author of sloppy did something wrong but
I see no reason to start from exactly the same piece square table as another program.

I believe that slightly different piece square tables will not lead to significant change in playing strength.

Uri

[Dann Corbit]

I think I can understand the tables above. If these are "secrets" of a chess program and I don't use them or learn from them, others will. Like Bob Hyatt, Vasik ,Friz Morten, Chrilly Donninger,Mayer Kahler.

Rasjid

Learn all you want. I think that's why they are out there. Copy them verbatum? That is a somewhat different concept.

Well put it this way.....by your own logic you better steal everything thats not nailed down around you before someone else does.

Are you saying that those authors are thieves?

Yes or no will suffice as an answer......



Christopher

Almost every program has a piece square table.
Do you think that every constant in a piece square table was independently researched and calculated from first principles?

Every single program uses either an alpha beta search or MTD(f) or a variant of those (in fact, they are proven to belong to the same class by a research paper). Anyway, only one person invented alpha/beta and only one person invented MTD(f) but everyone uses them.

I will state that there is no shame whatsoever in using someone else's idea, unless you claim that it was your invention or unless you have violated some agreement in doing so.

The author of Sloppy has done absolutely nothing wrong. Not morally, not academically, not scientifically. The way he did things is the way that you are *supposed* to do them.

Quite frankly, the clone hunters are a far bigger problem than the cloners are.

I do not think that the author of sloppy did something wrong but
I see no reason to start from exactly the same piece square table as another program.

I believe that slightly different piece square tables will not lead to significant change in playing strength.

Uri

Indeed, people will tend to tweak their piece square table over time to tune it to their program. But a thing like a piece square table is a trivial idea. If anyone is upset by someone else having the same or very similar constants in their piece square table, I would ask them:
"Where did your constants come from?"

I am sure at some point, they looked at what other people were doing. They took the ideas they liked best and used them in their program.

There are several programs that have piece square tables that came from a common source. I have seen peice square tables published in chess papers. Things like these add nothing new and no originality to a chess program and if using an idea like that disqualifies chess programs then almost all of them are disqualified because almost all programs use piece square tables. And yet clearly there is a single inventor of the piece square table in chess programs. Should he be the only one to be able to use the idea?

[Ryan Benitez]

But I have no problem with Sloppy and its honest author, everybody can decide wether he wants to use Sloppy or not.

Best,
Alex

True...I agree. It is in full sight and that he hides nothing. Why he needs the Fruit/Toga eval is the part I dont get? If he wanted to enter serious competition that would need to be changed.

Finally, we partly agree. Again, let me quote myself from the thread at the Winboard forum:

But, in your opinion (engine authors, tournament directors, and other people), should Sloppy be allowed to play in tournaments ?

I'm not going to enter Sloppy to any tournaments myself, but if people want to include it in their own tournaments, why shouldn't they?

So yeah, I'm not going to enter serious competition. Actually Sloppy is just one of the many computer programs I've written, it's nothing special. A year or two from now I'll probably be working on something completely different.

Q: What do we find here:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/~ilaripih/sloppy/download.html

A: We find source code.

Q: Is Fruit 2.1 a GPL engine?

A: Yes, Fruit 2.1 is a GPL engine.

Q: Is it valid to use code from a GPL engine if your engine is also open source?

A: Yes, it is totally valid to use that code. In fact, that was the INTENT of the original author.

Dann's own notes:
The 'sloppy' engine is full of original and interesting ideas. It is the only chess program I have seen that uses an AVL tree.

Clearly, Sloppy is "less of a clone" than Toga. I guess that there are still people who have a problem with Toga, but I can see no reasonable reason to take issue with Sloppy.

IMO-YMMV.

From what I have seen in Sloppy it is original and is only GPL because that is what the author chooses. Sure it has ideas from Fruit but there is nothing wrong with that at all. I was asked by someone to look at the eval function because it is the "same" as Fruit 2.1. My reply is simply that he wrote it in his own code. Let’s back off and give some credit for Sloppy and its author for the hard work.

Ryan

[Graham Banks]

From what I have seen in Sloppy it is original and is only GPL because that is what the author chooses. Sure it has ideas from Fruit but there is nothing wrong with that at all. I was asked by someone to look at the eval function because it is the "same" as Fruit 2.1. My reply is simply that he wrote it in his own code. Let’s back off and give some credit for Sloppy and its author for the hard work.

Ryan

Well said Ryan.

Regards, Graham.

[Christopher Conkie]

I think I can understand the tables above. If these are "secrets" of a chess program and I don't use them or learn from them, others will. Like Bob Hyatt, Vasik ,Friz Morten, Chrilly Donninger,Mayer Kahler.

Rasjid

Learn all you want. I think that's why they are out there. Copy them verbatum? That is a somewhat different concept.

Well put it this way.....by your own logic you better steal everything thats not nailed down around you before someone else does.

Are you saying that those authors are thieves?

Yes or no will suffice as an answer......



Christopher

Almost every program has a piece square table.
Do you think that every constant in a piece square table was independently researched and calculated from first principles?.

Don't change the subject to get him off the hook. You know that there is a difference between the creation of ones own values and the copying of someone elses.

I know what I read in the previous post.

Every single program uses either an alpha beta search or MTD(f) or a variant of those (in fact, they are proven to belong to the same class by a research paper). Anyway, only one person invented alpha/beta and only one person invented MTD(f) but everyone uses them.

So? What's your point?

I will state that there is no shame whatsoever in using someone else's idea, unless you claim that it was your invention or unless you have violated some agreement in doing so.

No one said there was any shame in how Sloppy came to be.

The author of Sloppy has done absolutely nothing wrong. Not morally, not academically, not scientifically. The way he did things is the way that you are *supposed* to do them.

Sloppy is somewhat different in how it came to be than say Toga for example. He did everything in full sight. He copied the piece square table values exactly and said so. He even released them with your beloved GPL. That point is important as Sloppy contains large amounts of Toga.

Because of this point he asked in the Winboard Forum if it was acceptable for it to be put in tournaments. One of the people who runs such a tournament said no to that from his point of view. The reason? It contains Fruit's evaluation terms and Fruit is already in that tournament. The door was however left open to him if he changed the eval to something original. Go and read it all yourself.

As to serious tounaments he says he is not interested. That is just as well because the eval is currently Toga's. One day he might change it and then it will be different. He has said he would, so we will need to wait and see if he does.

We are talking about exactly the same values, weight for weight.

Quite frankly, the clone hunters are a far bigger problem than the cloners are.

I think people who but in threads when a resolution to something has already been found and has long since past are the worst problem.

People should know better who do that and should read the full thread before they attempt to pontificate to others.

Now...if you'll excuse me, my question to Mr Rasjid still remains.....

Are you saying that those authors are thieves?

Yes or no will suffice as an answer......

Still waiting for the answer.....

Christopher

[Christopher Conkie]

I think I can understand the tables above. If these are "secrets" of a chess program and I don't use them or learn from them, others will. Like Bob Hyatt, Vasik ,Friz Morten, Chrilly Donninger,Mayer Kahler.

Rasjid

Learn all you want. I think that's why they are out there. Copy them verbatum? That is a somewhat different concept.

Well put it this way.....by your own logic you better steal everything thats not nailed down around you before someone else does.

Are you saying that those authors are thieves?

Yes or no will suffice as an answer......



Christopher

Almost every program has a piece square table.
Do you think that every constant in a piece square table was independently researched and calculated from first principles?

Every single program uses either an alpha beta search or MTD(f) or a variant of those (in fact, they are proven to belong to the same class by a research paper). Anyway, only one person invented alpha/beta and only one person invented MTD(f) but everyone uses them.

I will state that there is no shame whatsoever in using someone else's idea, unless you claim that it was your invention or unless you have violated some agreement in doing so.

The author of Sloppy has done absolutely nothing wrong. Not morally, not academically, not scientifically. The way he did things is the way that you are *supposed* to do them.

Quite frankly, the clone hunters are a far bigger problem than the cloners are.

I do not think that the author of sloppy did something wrong but
I see no reason to start from exactly the same piece square table as another program.

I believe that slightly different piece square tables will not lead to significant change in playing strength.

Uri

Indeed, people will tend to tweak their piece square table over time to tune it to their program. But a thing like a piece square table is a trivial idea. If anyone is upset by someone else having the same or very similar constants in their piece square table, I would ask them:
"Where did your constants come from?"

I am sure at some point, they looked at what other people were doing. They took the ideas they liked best and used them in their program.

There are several programs that have piece square tables that came from a common source. I have seen peice square tables published in chess papers. Things like these add nothing new and no originality to a chess program and if using an idea like that disqualifies chess programs then almost all of them are disqualified because almost all programs use piece square tables. And yet clearly there is a single inventor of the piece square table in chess programs. Should he be the only one to be able to use the idea?

No one is talking about using the idea or the concept of a piece square table.

We are talking about the exact same values as another program being used in all the piece square tables.

Is it that hard for you to understand?

You sound like a stuck record.