What should Robert do? (read post first before you vote)

[jdart]

I stand corrected. I do not see an attached license in the files.

The question of origin is still there, however.

--Jon

[Don]

Ippolit as far as I know was released with neither copyright nor license.

Leaving aside questions of origin, Robbolito was released under GPL 3, at least the 0.09 version I have was. It is not just "freeware," it is freeware with a license. So no one is allowed to derive from the code and release a closed-source version.

--Jon

There you have the code Robbolito original
0.9 was the last, that's a Mod

http://chess.cygnitec.com/engine/robbolito/source/

uci() of Robbolito.084. wuan robbo.

Code: Select all

void
uci ()
{
  TRASMISSIONE ("id name RobboLito version %s\n", VERSION);
  TRASMISSIONE ("id author Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, ");
  TRASMISSIONE ("Igor Igorovoich Igoronov, Roberto Pescatore\n");
  TRASMISSIONE ("id copyright Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin (all), "
		"92th year from Revolution, PUBLICDOMAIN (workers)\n");
  TRASMISSIONE ("id dedication To Vladimir Ilyich\n");
  TRASMISSIONE
    ("option name TranspositionalTabularSizing (Zobrist) in MegaBytes.");
  TRASMISSIONE (" Note: Only dyadic powers suffice terminally! ");
  TRASMISSIONE ("type spin min 1 max 16384 default 32\n");
  TRASMISSIONE ("uciok\n");
}

Robbolito.085g3,

Code: Select all

/*
RobboLito is a UCI chess playing engine by
Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, Igor Igorovich Igoronov, Roberto Pescatore
copyright: (C) 2009 Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin
date: 92th and 93rd year from Revolution
owners: PUBLICDOMAIN (workers)
dedication: To Vladimir Ilyich

RobboLito is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published
by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License,
or (at your option) any later version.

RobboLito is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
*/

#include "robbolito.h"
#include "monitor.h"
#include "search.h"

void uci()
    {
    numCPU = check_num_CPU();
    PONDER = FALSE;
    MPH = 2;
    printf("id name " NAME "\n");
    printf("id author Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, Igor Igorovich Igoronov, Roberto Pescatore\n");
    printf("id copyright Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin\n");
    printf("id date 92th and 93rd year from Revolution\n");
    printf("id owners PUBLICDOMAIN (workers)\n");
    printf("id dedication To Vladimir Ilyich\n");
    printf("option name Hash type spin default 128 min 4 max 16384\n");
    printf("option name Ponder type check default false\n");
    printf("option name Move on Ponderhit type combo var Never var Sometimes var Always default Sometimes\n");
    printf("uciok\n");
    fflush(stdout);
    }

PUBLICDOMAIN

I am not following which point you are making. Are you saying that the public owns Houdini? Or are you saying that since I am "owner" of Robbolito I can privatize it? If I privatize it, then I could actually sue you for using Robbo? Do you see the catch 22 here?

The concept of ownership when it comes to anything that is not physical is full of contradictions and requires a huge body of law to cover the many corner cases.

It would not surprise me that if it could be converted to a mathematical formula it could be proved that ownership cannot exist!

[jdart]

As others have noted, "Public domain" and "GPL license" are contradictory.

But if the author intended it to be placed under GPL, then as you know, there are specific requirements that must be met if the code is used in a derived work. It isn't just free for all possible uses.

There is a separate question of whether the code is actually an original work of the claimed authors. If it is not they don't own it (or at least not all of it) and can't distribute it unless in its original form it was freely available or open source licensed.

--Jon

[Don]

As others have noted, "Public domain" and "GPL license" are contradictory.

But if the author intended it to be placed under GPL, then as you know, there are specific requirements that must be met if the code is used in a derived work. It isn't just free for all possible uses.

There is a separate question of whether the code is actually an original work of the claimed authors. If it is not they don't own it (or at least not all of it) and can't distribute it unless in its original form it was freely available or open source licensed.

--Jon

Yes, GPL comes with signficant restrictions and in fact you do not own any part of a GPL product. Open source does not mean free.

Public domain is supposed to mean completely unrestricted but since that leads immediately to logical contradictions then I'm sure it doesn't really mean that. If I make my own chess program I can completely own it, change the licence, do almost anything I want. But if I put it in the public domain (without any license) then it comes with some restrictions.

The whole concept of freedom tends to be misunderstood because freedom is always very relative and comes with all sort of restrictions and responsibilities. There is no such thing as absolute freedom.

[kranium]

I stand corrected. I do not see an attached license in the files.

The question of origin is still there, however.

--Jon

John-

Robbolito 0.09 has 3 docs in the archive:
history.txt (change history)
robbolito.txt
and
copying.txt (GPL version 3)

[Don]

I stand corrected. I do not see an attached license in the files.

The question of origin is still there, however.

--Jon

the original download had 3 docs in the archive:
history.txt (change history)
robbolito.txt
and
copying.txt (GPL version 3)

When you say original, do you mean the very first "clone" exposed to the public or just the English Robbolito translation?

[jdart]

I refer to the FTP link posted that contained the 0.85f1a version.

--Jon

[kranium]

I refer to the FTP link posted that contained the 0.85f1a version.

--Jon

ok, yes, as you know...
that is the the ippolit.wikispaces.com release
it does not contain any license docs

[Don]

I refer to the FTP link posted that contained the 0.85f1a version.

--Jon

that is the the original ippolit relase

No it isn't. First of all it's Robbolit and not ippolit so what do you mean when you say it was the first ippolit release?

The first release that I ever say was a single file source with Italian names for objects and comments.

[jdart]

public domain is supposed to mean completely unrestricted but since that leads immediately to logical contradictions

The only contradiction here is that it is not compatible with a GPL or similar license.

Public domain generally means that there are no ownership rights asserted for the work in question. A common case is a work whose copyright has expired. An author can also explicitly disclaim copyright. That isn't self-contradictory. Although, in my experience, most people who want to provide broad access to something will keep the copyright but license it under a highly permissive license.

--Jon