On escaping copyright by rewriting everything

[Peter Aloysius]

Right, but remember that none of them ever directly stated that Rybka is fruit's clone.

I just don't get it, why we can not question about Rybka originality? Because she's just too strong? Ooops, I forgot, if an accused clone is much much stronger than original, it could'nt be a clone, it called derived or whatever.

I wonder what happen IF Rybka is about equal or 50 elo point weaker than Fruit. I believe she will stated as clone without further question and without doubt.

Remember Fafis? El Chinito?

And no, before someone say it, I'm NOT JEALOUS. I'm losing interest in computer chess anyway.

I repeat my question:

if Stelka is known to be a clone of Rybka, (stated as such in Wikipedia, confirmed by Vas himself, w/ apparent agreement by CEGT and CCRL)

and Strelka is known to have so much Fruit code in it...
isn't it logical, fair, and correct to question the legitimacy of both programs?

and if it is logical, fair, and correct to do so...
why have Christophe T., Bob H., Zach W., myself and others come under such harsh attack for doing so?

Primarily because of the way you've conducted your investigation as has been explained several times previously.

This is the place for such things, open and honest!

You don't drown the girl before it's determined she's a witch.

[Graham Banks]

I'm losing interest in computer chess anyway.

Sorry to hear that Peter. Thanks for your contribution to computer chess thus far and I hope that you will regain your interest at some stage.
Petir is a fine engine, one that you should be proud of creating.

Regards, Graham.

[Rolf]

The fact that Rybka is 200 Elo better than most top engines is in itself some proof of originality. If it were not novel, everyone would be doing it.

Dann-

No one is arguing that Rybka 1.0 is 100% identical to Fruit 2.1. There are many differences, and an improvement in strength is definitely one of them.
The questions and concerns being raised are about the origins of Rybka 1.0, and these (questions and concerns) are perfectly logcial:

how would you (or anyone) answer this question:

if Stelka is known to be a clone of Rybka, (stated as such in Wikipedia, and confirmed by Vas himself), and Strelka is known to have so much Fruit code in it...
isn't it fair and correct to question the legitimacy of both programs??

PS: we now have Strelka 2.0 source code...clearly containing many hundreds of lines of source code taken directly from Fruit 2.1, yet Strelka is still being distributed, and is even being tested by the CCRL and the CEGT? It has been accepted by the chess community?

Norm

First of all I want to thank Dann for his superb description of the actual affair as it's held in CCC. After reading his statements, explanations and refutations in special of Zach's delusional assumptions, I am even more convinced than before that this all here is unallowed smear activity against Vas and his Rybka. I am very thankful to all what Grah has written on that behalf and it's clear that nobody from the 5 activists has given a single sound counter argument against Dann or Grah. That speaks for itself, against these activists, also that Bob didnt even show up - because as I said earlier on page 2 of this thread, the whole activists have lost out of sight the context of legal relevance. For me the newest scandfal is what Zach thinks could be allowed to say. He said, that it must be allowed to discuss all this in CCC in special, but that he always (sic!) shyed away from all legal implications. If Bob had ever stated this I would have thanked him.

Then secondly I want to mention an observation I made while reading the whole thread after being absent. I saw that always one particular activist makes the debate against one critic, if then the activist A comes to a defeat becasuse he knows no further arguments, then the next activist is taking over the debate. But fortunately the critic then abstains because otherwise he would be dragged through all kind of nonsense only to obfuscate the defeat of the former activist. BTW a well known internet possibility. I was often enough in the position of the singulasr critic against dozens of activists and wrongly I had thought that I could address all "arguments" as if I were in a seminary of a university. There the span of attention is bif enough for such extensions but alas, here in a forum this leads by force to a case of seeming abuse of the forum freedom to post, because in a short time period the cvritic has made 50 messages and the crowd begins to revolt against such misbehavior.

Thirdly I want to refutate the typical proof of why Rybka is basically taken from Fruit or how you prefer to articulate the suspicion. Clone or not. Ideas stolen and how many.

if Stelka is known to be a clone of Rybka, (stated as such in Wikipedia, and confirmed by Vas himself), and Strelka is known to have so much Fruit code in it...
isn't it fair and correct to question the legitimacy of both programs??

We can find here many legal allegations at once:

- Strelka isnt at all known to be a clone of Rybka

- the mention in Wikipedia isnt at all a proof, because it has been entered to open another place of war against Vas to continue the smear activity outside a mere computer chess forum

- Vas hasnt confirmed at all that Strelka is a clone of Rybka

- alone the terminology is a illegal affront against Vas because the short mention of "Rybka" insinuates that asll that is valid for Rybka versions as such

- Strelka isnt known to have Fruit code but Strelka is the illegal construct intended to support the smear campaign against Rybka (as such); it is made to attack Vas by illegally offering code detail and ideas form Fruit and then Rybka 1; these ideas however were never speaking against Vas because he didnt simply copy and paste but he understood the details in Fruit and wrote his own code. This Rybka 1 version was given for free to the community. But it was illegal to decompile or whatever tech tricks appled because giving as program for free doesnt allow the publishing of the internal details of that program. It was given for free usage but not for a computer tech wise opening and then publishing. Then the next trick IMO was that the programmers who violated the well known rules for such free programs came from Russia or neighbor States so that any legal consequence for that illegal activity couldnt be enforced for the known political reasons. - But all in all this means tht such a chain of logic seems only legal but in truth it relies itself on illegally ripped knowledge. Of course I cant know the last details of the illegal activity because I am unable to examine the code by myself aqs a lay and so I must rely on what I've read here in CCC. My final verdict is if a Western programmer like Norm Schmidt appears here with such a logical chain based on illegal activities this isnt a naive or excusable error, instead it's intentional activity against the good name of Vas. And that shouldnt be tolerated here in CCC.

- From a science perspective I must admit that the appearance of Strelka basically proves that Vas cant have done something wrong or illegal because also in comparison to Strelka results into the truth tthat onlxy Vas as a programmer has unterstood the many Fruit ideas and had then enough own ideas to improve the Rybka versions further on in such remarkable dimensions while clones (?) like Strelka ar bound to live on a similar low level as their original. So science allows to conclude that Vas has always written his original code. Also Toga, certainly a nice compilation out of Fruit and others, doesnt reach the high level of Vas always new top progs. But as far as Toga is concerned I have no expertise at all. Interestingly almost nothing has been debated about this program in CCC.

[Terry McCracken]

snapcracklehss

∞

[Uri Blass]

Right, but remember that none of them ever directly stated that Rybka is fruit's clone.

I just don't get it, why we can not question about Rybka originality? Because she's just too strong? Ooops, I forgot, if an accused clone is much much stronger than original, it could'nt be a clone, it called derived or whatever.

I wonder what happen IF Rybka is about equal or 50 elo point weaker than Fruit. I believe she will stated as clone without further question and without doubt.

Remember Fafis? El Chinito?

And no, before someone say it, I'm NOT JEALOUS. I'm losing interest in computer chess anyway.

I repeat my question:

if Stelka is known to be a clone of Rybka, (stated as such in Wikipedia, confirmed by Vas himself, w/ apparent agreement by CEGT and CCRL)

and Strelka is known to have so much Fruit code in it...
isn't it logical, fair, and correct to question the legitimacy of both programs?

and if it is logical, fair, and correct to do so...
why have Christophe T., Bob H., Zach W., myself and others come under such harsh attack for doing so?

Primarily because of the way you've conducted your investigation as has been explained several times previously.

This is the place for such things, open and honest!

You don't drown the girl before it's determined she's a witch.

This is simply nonsense

In case rybka was 50 elo weaker than Fruit you could probably see no people claiming that it is not original because the evidence is simply weak relative to other cases.

Fafis? El Chinito?

I believe that they are a different case

Fabien himself looked at strelka and could not say directly that it is a clone(not remember the exact words but he said that it seems that it was rewritten and if it is rewritten it is ok or something like that)

Something similiar did not happen with fafis and El Chinito.

I can add that that chess players reject the idea that rybka is based on fruit for the simple fact that
rybka does not have some productive knowledge that fruit has about simple endgames and if Vas started by modifying fruit to make it stronger you could expect him to keep productive knoweldge.

Fruit knows about simple endgames even without tablebases and tablebases cannot help in some cases.

Here are 2 examples when only fruit has evaluation knowledge.


[d]3K4/2Q5/8/8/8/8/1kp5/8 w - - 0 1

[d]7k/p7/1p6/8/7P/3B3P/K6P/8 w - - 0 1

Uri

[Zach Wegner]

Uri,

Look at the rest of the evaluation (minus Rybka's material eval, which is in place of Fruit's). Do you see any other differences?

I will add that the way Fruit evaluates endgames is very unique, and quite recognizable. If I were to "clone" Fruit, I would definitely delete that. Not that that proves anything...

[Rolf]

Uri,

Look at the rest of the evaluation (minus Rybka's material eval, which is in place of Fruit's). Do you see any other differences?

I will add that the way Fruit evaluates endgames is very unique, and quite recognizable. If I were to "clone" Fruit, I would definitely delete that. Not that that proves anything...

So you can look at the evaluation of Rybka. I see. <g>

[Tony Thomas]

But as far as Toga is concerned I have no expertise at all. Interestingly almost nothing has been debated about this program in CCC.

You are kidding right?

[Uri Blass]

Uri,

Look at the rest of the evaluation (minus Rybka's material eval, which is in place of Fruit's). Do you see any other differences?

I will add that the way Fruit evaluates endgames is very unique, and quite recognizable. If I were to "clone" Fruit, I would definitely delete that. Not that that proves anything...

I remember that there are clear differences in the way that rybka evaluate passed pawns and using ideas of fruit is clearly legal.

For example ideas like
mobility evaluation that is a linear function of the number of moves is
something that everyone is allowed to use and average between middle game and end game is also ideas that everyone is allowed to use.

Based on your words I get the impression that you are against using ideas from other programs and that you can never have evaluator for simple endgames like KQ vs KP because fruit has copyright to this idea(you do not say it directly but you say that the way that fruit evaluate endgames is unique and imply that other programmers should not learn from it if they do not want to get into trouble).

Note that I remember that old chessmaster6000 had similiar evaluation to fruit in the case of KQ vs KP and chessmaster6000 came clearly earlier to fruit.

Uri

[Uri Blass]

Uri,

Look at the rest of the evaluation (minus Rybka's material eval, which is in place of Fruit's). Do you see any other differences?

I will add that the way Fruit evaluates endgames is very unique, and quite recognizable. If I were to "clone" Fruit, I would definitely delete that. Not that that proves anything...

So you can look at the evaluation of Rybka. I see. <g>

He can look at the evaluation of strelka that is based on rybka1
but even if you look at the evaluation of strelka there are clear differences between it and fruit's evaluation.

Uri