Vasik Rajlich Speaks!

[natasha]

Do you need to be a programmer to know that if you type it all in yourself it can/can not be copying?

If it's a direct copy, then of course not.

I think any honest independent, non chess, programmer reading the information will come to only 1 conclusion. There were several on the panel. Have any studied the case and said Vas is innocent?

From memory, only 14 on the panel voted. Many others on the panel were unaware that it was anything more than a discussion group. This has all been covered before.
I have no programming skills whatsoever, so I don't understand many of the technical aspects discussed. That's why I haven't offered an opinion since the ruling.
However, long before the investigation, both Ryan Benitez and Christopher Conkie had told me that Rybka was okay, which is why I'd always defended it before that.

Anyone on the panel was greeted with this web page (now open to the world):

http://icga.wikispaces.com/

Please take a look.

It is quite clear from the very first page what the web site was for and what the panel was for. The only way for any panel member to not know what the purpose of the panel was for would be if they totally ignored what the pages said. And what was discussed. And many messages sent to them asking for opinions. I find this just about impossible.

We've had this discussion, so I don't see how you still find this impossible. Furthermore you can ask Friedel, and I am pretty sure he will never claim he knew he was joining some investigatory panel.

Frederic asked to join the panel. There was not requirement members of the panel vote, but we certainly wished they did.

Are you telling me you joined something that required you to sign up, but then ignore all the messages sent to you seeking your opinions? You never looked at any of the evidence or wiki pages? You told me at one time that Friedel told you to sign up. And I do not doubt that at all. But did you never then look at any of the information or even the main page? I will not claim you never looked, since I do not know. But I do wonder why you would join in the first place if you were not going to participate.

It would be clear, with Albert's above and below thread, to a mentally retarded 6 year old that either you were terribly mistaken and did not take time to check the facts, you were just throwing crap up against a wall to see what would stick, or you are just a liar hoping nobody catches you. Or all of the above. It is much easier now to see how you check your facts when you investigate a matter. And that would include any and all matters. Or do you check them and fit them to what you want people to hear? You and Hyatt make a good pair for Levy to pal up with. And you wanted Vas to participate and lower himself to the level you 3 are on. You really must have thought he was an idiot. I have just about had enough of the whole bunch of you. Did anyone involved have a moral compass? If he did, he damn sure hasn't surfaced yet.

If you want to respond- talk to another pair of eyes/ears. I have seen more than enough out of you.

"george in a"

naughty not nice

you can get medication for these hormonal mood swings dear

or ask your doctor to adjust your present prescription

Thanks for your concern. I am humbled. Actually he upped my morphine dosage foe my back problems, and at 76 years old, I had a bad reaction from mixing the morphine and viagra.

well NO hard feelings but you did say you would ignore us

we are sooooo disapointed you are not a man

of your word dear

we understand you may feel limp , deflated at times but really those 2 drugs counteract each other

basic pharmacology that
as jefferson airplane sang

one pill males you larger one pill makes you small

Possibly you are like the morphine, maybe- addictive. But I can only handle you in small doses. A little goes a long way.

so your words as good as Vas's then


to cheer you up
something lighter than morphia


http://morethanchessagame.forumotion.co ... s-movement

[lucasart]

Hi Ed,

I only have one question for Vas.
- Give the source code of Rybka 1.0 beta to Ed Shroder so he can 'totally independent' see how much fruit/crafty code he has used.
I can bet 1000 € that he want do it and i already knows his answer.
He didn't has the source code anymore.....blablabla...and so on

Best
Johan

agree. he can say what he wants, but it's all bla bla and doesn't matter. if he has nothing to hide then he's ready to publish the source code...

[dj]

So you are saying that you won't use Rybka 5 if you play serious chess (or are a professional which you make a living off of chess) and it has been found to be the strongest thing out with high quality analysis that all of you competitors are using?

And even if you are constantly losing games because your competitors are using Rybka and you not?

Be honest and answer directly (yes or no).

i will not buy rybka5. i will not buy ANY product from vas rajlich anymore.
i was once betrayed and do not trust anymore. i do also not believe that rybka5 will come out. if a company sells rybka5, this company will soon or later be a target of a sales-boycott and ugly details about the "new product" will be published.
i doubt any serious company will stand this.
if chessbase (or any other company) really believes they could come out with a product rybka5, they will end in a desaster and courts will shut down that business soon. it will be a waterloo from a marketing point of view.

Your last two sentences are nonsense. If ChessBase were to be unwilling to sell Rybka 5 at some time in the future on account of legal and public relations problems then it would certainly not be continuing to sell Rybka 4 as it does at present.

In addition to Rybka, ChessBase sells Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Zap!Chess and Chess Tiger. Rybka is significantly stronger than all of them. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka 4 (and will sell Rybka 5 in due course) because a very large number of people will always want to purchase the strongest commercial program available.

You seem to confuse the subjective opinions of the ICGA and the Grand Inquisitor with a legal decision. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka so long as it is legal , so long as it is the strongest commercial program, and so long has it has a large customer base.

Perhaps Letouzey (or more likely the triumvirate of Levy, Hyatt and Williamson) will bring a legal case against Rajlich. I doubt whether any of those four gentlemen have the stomach for that (the Grand Inquisitor and Harvey much prefer endless words), but if they did then the fun would really start. But please note, Thorsten, that any legal case would have to be against Rybka 4 (or Rybka 5 when it appears) and not Rybka 1.0.

In the absence of a court case then there is no question that ChesssBase and others will sell the current and future versions of Rybka. The central fact (unpalatable as it is to the Grand Inquisitor) is that Vasik Rajlich has proved himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet. And not only has he kept ahead of commercial rivals by a substantial margin, they all owe him a vote of thanks for improvements in their own programs by giving them a superior program against which to test and refine their own software.

[ngerber]

Rybka4 is overtaken by freeware engines and other commercial engines.
Even chessbase will fear a general boycott of their products discussed in the media if they want to sell another rajlich product.

[Rebel]

It seems to me that he has completely clarified what he means by, 'original at the source code level'

I opened a new thread in the programmer forum about copying code in general and tried to pin it down to the core of nowadays trouble with all the strong open sources available.

[Roger Brown]

Your last two sentences are nonsense. If ChessBase were to be unwilling to sell Rybka 5 at some time in the future on account of legal and public relations problems then it would certainly not be continuing to sell Rybka 4 as it does at present.

In addition to Rybka, ChessBase sells Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Zap!Chess and Chess Tiger. Rybka is significantly stronger than all of them. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka 4 (and will sell Rybka 5 in due course) because a very large number of people will always want to purchase the strongest commercial program available.

You seem to confuse the subjective opinions of the ICGA and the Grand Inquisitor with a legal decision. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka so long as it is legal , so long as it is the strongest commercial program, and so long has it has a large customer base.

Perhaps Letouzey (or more likely the triumvirate of Levy, Hyatt and Williamson) will bring a legal case against Rajlich. I doubt whether any of those four gentlemen have the stomach for that (the Grand Inquisitor and Harvey much prefer endless words), but if they did then the fun would really start. But please note, Thorsten, that any legal case would have to be against Rybka 4 (or Rybka 5 when it appears) and not Rybka 1.0.

In the absence of a court case then there is no question that ChesssBase and others will sell the current and future versions of Rybka. The central fact (unpalatable as it is to the Grand Inquisitor) is that Vasik Rajlich has proved himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet. And not only has he kept ahead of commercial rivals by a substantial margin, they all owe him a vote of thanks for improvements in their own programs by giving them a superior program against which to test and refine their own software.

Hello Derek,

Isn't Houdini the strongest program on the planet outside of the margin of error? Has Robert Houdart therefore proven himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet and therefore worthy of praise by all programmers?

I am only arguing the strongest there is program point and not any legal or technical issue.

Later.

[geots]

So you are saying that you won't use Rybka 5 if you play serious chess (or are a professional which you make a living off of chess) and it has been found to be the strongest thing out with high quality analysis that all of you competitors are using?

And even if you are constantly losing games because your competitors are using Rybka and you not?

Be honest and answer directly (yes or no).

i will not buy rybka5. i will not buy ANY product from vas rajlich anymore.
i was once betrayed and do not trust anymore. i do also not believe that rybka5 will come out. if a company sells rybka5, this company will soon or later be a target of a sales-boycott and ugly details about the "new product" will be published.
i doubt any serious company will stand this.
if chessbase (or any other company) really believes they could come out with a product rybka5, they will end in a desaster and courts will shut down that business soon. it will be a waterloo from a marketing point of view.

Your last two sentences are nonsense. If ChessBase were to be unwilling to sell Rybka 5 at some time in the future on account of legal and public relations problems then it would certainly not be continuing to sell Rybka 4 as it does at present.

In addition to Rybka, ChessBase sells Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Zap!Chess and Chess Tiger. Rybka is significantly stronger than all of them. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka 4 (and will sell Rybka 5 in due course) because a very large number of people will always want to purchase the strongest commercial program available.

You seem to confuse the subjective opinions of the ICGA and the Grand Inquisitor with a legal decision. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka so long as it is legal , so long as it is the strongest commercial program, and so long has it has a large customer base.

Perhaps Letouzey (or more likely the triumvirate of Levy, Hyatt and Williamson) will bring a legal case against Rajlich. I doubt whether any of those four gentlemen have the stomach for that (the Grand Inquisitor and Harvey much prefer endless words), but if they did then the fun would really start. But please note, Thorsten, that any legal case would have to be against Rybka 4 (or Rybka 5 when it appears) and not Rybka 1.0.

In the absence of a court case then there is no question that ChesssBase and others will sell the current and future versions of Rybka. The central fact (unpalatable as it is to the Grand Inquisitor) is that Vasik Rajlich has proved himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet. And not only has he kept ahead of commercial rivals by a substantial margin, they all owe him a vote of thanks for improvements in their own programs by giving them a superior program against which to test and refine their own software.

Extremely well thought out and extremely well written. I would add a point or 2, but you seem to have covered them all. I'm a bit jealous. I don't think any of Vas' detractors will have a problem understanding the word "jealous", aka "jealousy".


Best,

george

[K I Hyams]

Hi Ed,

I only have one question for Vas.
- Give the source code of Rybka 1.0 beta to Ed Shroder so he can 'totally independent' see how much fruit/crafty code he has used.
I can bet 1000 € that he want do it and i already knows his answer.
He didn't has the source code anymore.....blablabla...and so on

Best
Johan

agree. he can say what he wants, but it's all bla bla and doesn't matter. if he has nothing to hide then he's ready to publish the source code...

The exchange below is taken from the Rybka forum and altered to make it CCC friendly.

In my opinion, his repeated claim to have lost the source code to Rybka 1 and Rybka 2 is shown to be untrue. Either way, he appears to retract it immediately when faced with evidence that indicates that it is untrue. He then appears to offer to provide the code in question and immediately retract that offer when pressed.

Even in the light of the Hernandez video, I was taken aback by the stupidity that he exhibits here. However both that video and the exchange below pale into insignificance when you look at his comments about copyright.

Hi Vas,
Something nice and simple for you:

The fact that Rybka versions released before Rybka 3 are now ancient is one of a number of reasons why it would seem unlikely that they hold much commercially sensitive information in 2012.

Even if they do, you could make the source code of the Rybka versions 1 and 2 that played in ICGA tournaments available to a responsible ICGA associated expert who is not one of your competitors and who undertakes to keep your code confidential.

If you did that and the code was declared as untainted as you claim it is, many of the accusations that have been leveled against you would melt away and a substantial number of experts who have spoken out against you would end up with egg on their faces. Are you still reluctant to release the R1 and/or the R2 code under those controlled conditions and if so, will you please explain why?
Keith

I don't have any Rybka source code from before the spring of 2010. Possibly I will release the source code to Rybka 4 in a few years, when it has no remaining value. I haven't decided about that yet. It's not something I am considering right now.

In the long run, this issue and others like it will be resolved by better tools. In the future, we'll have programs which can take two executables and quantify the source-code-level similarities between them. Code copying will then be very clear.

Thank you for your prompt answer. However, having read the post below, I find the statement that you "don't have any Rybka source code from before the spring of 2010" rather surprising. The post quoted below was written by Lukas Cimiotti on date 2011-08-14 at 10:28 hours. My problem is that I do not understand why you would be discussing reasons for not releasing obsolete code if it wasn't in your possession anyway. Would you please explain?


- N/- By Lukas Cimiotti (*****) [de] Date 2011-08-14 10:28
Vas and I discussed whether or not he should give source code to the ICGA. He really didn't like that idea. My idea was removing all comments and maybe changing all names of variables to make the code harder to understand. But as the guys that disassembled Rybka hadn't understood several parts of the code, we agreed it's safer to not give anything to our competitors.
So Vas only defended himself by saying: I did nothing wrong.
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ;hl=source

By Vasik Rajlich Date 2012-01-08 20:55
In this scenario I would release the source code that I had. (I probably misunderstand your question.)

Vas

By K I Hyams Date 2012-01-08 21:13
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you are willing to show obsolete source code to an honest broker, who is not one of your competitors, under controlled conditions. Such an action would clear up a lot of questions. I wonder whether that can be arranged in the near future.

By Vasik Rajlich Date 2012-01-08 21:19
I don't see how that would help. It wouldn't convince anybody who wasn't that broker.

Vas

By K I Hyams Date 2012-01-08 21:36
The opinions of expert and impartial witnesses can carry a lot of weight. Am I to understand that you are now withdrawing your offer that "In this scenario I would release the source code that I had", within 50 minutes of making that offer?

By Vasik Rajlich Date 2012-01-08 22:01
> The opinions of expert and impartial witnesses can carry a lot of weight.

It wouldn't be an impartial witness if it was someone of my choosing.

Anyway, no, this is not an option (for now).

Vas

[Rebel]

Vas has not helped himself with the ridiculous answers he is giving but you still blindly defend him while claiming you are impartial.

How can I be defending him if I can't say whether the ruling is right or wrong?
All I am interested in is that what people say is not twisted and then misrepresented in an impartial manner. That's all.

I'm really disappointed in the way that several people on both sides of the argument have turned this forum and the Rybka forum into cesspools though. Not sure why either forum bothers to have moderators wen they can't be bothered moderating.

Graham you have just done exactly what you are criticising others for. You bend what happened with the panel to go with the 'Ed' agenda you then interprate what Vas said to Jeremy again in a way that suites the 'Ed' side of the story.

Harvey,

For a long time this whole debate is no longer about truth-finding but about WINNING, keeping positions, stick to it and throwing mud without offering real content, your above words being the latest example of that.

Here is the pattern I noticed, my pages are online now for a couple of months, it offers a technical refutation on programmer level and as you can see from the added counters these are well visited.

What I expected did not happen, a point to point refutation of what is offered over there as an alternative view.

What I received from the ICGA in email is basically saying the web-page is CRAP this a couple of hours after I announced the web-page release to them, later publicly repeated by Harvey and Bob. No intellectual content, just crap being the best possible description. With permission from Bob and Mark Lefler I am happy to show those short email correspondences.

But more important, surely you can argue about the contents over there, this is a complicated case, but I don't write crap, that's for sure. And the silence simply is deafening. And I don't believe for one moment people like Zach and Mark W. feel so sorry for me they out of pity have decided to spare me.

Now, I have seen statements by Bob like, "we have been playing with the idea to refute your web-page point by point".

On this I would like to say:

JUST DO IT.

[dj]

Your last two sentences are nonsense. If ChessBase were to be unwilling to sell Rybka 5 at some time in the future on account of legal and public relations problems then it would certainly not be continuing to sell Rybka 4 as it does at present.

In addition to Rybka, ChessBase sells Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Zap!Chess and Chess Tiger. Rybka is significantly stronger than all of them. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka 4 (and will sell Rybka 5 in due course) because a very large number of people will always want to purchase the strongest commercial program available.

You seem to confuse the subjective opinions of the ICGA and the Grand Inquisitor with a legal decision. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka so long as it is legal , so long as it is the strongest commercial program, and so long has it has a large customer base.

Perhaps Letouzey (or more likely the triumvirate of Levy, Hyatt and Williamson) will bring a legal case against Rajlich. I doubt whether any of those four gentlemen have the stomach for that (the Grand Inquisitor and Harvey much prefer endless words), but if they did then the fun would really start. But please note, Thorsten, that any legal case would have to be against Rybka 4 (or Rybka 5 when it appears) and not Rybka 1.0.

In the absence of a court case then there is no question that ChesssBase and others will sell the current and future versions of Rybka. The central fact (unpalatable as it is to the Grand Inquisitor) is that Vasik Rajlich has proved himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet. And not only has he kept ahead of commercial rivals by a substantial margin, they all owe him a vote of thanks for improvements in their own programs by giving them a superior program against which to test and refine their own software.

Hello Derek,

Isn't Houdini the strongest program on the planet outside of the margin of error? Has Robert Houdart therefore proven himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet and therefore worthy of praise by all programmers?

Houdini 1.5 appeared less than 13 months ago so ignoring the question whether it is ir is not a Rybka clone the fact is that Houdart has still to prove himself in the longer term. Rybka was the strongest program (by a wide margin) between 2006 and early 2011 - a substantial period of time. Houdini is a relatively new kid on the block. It will be interesting to see whether Houdini can achieve and maintain the gap over its rivals between 2012-2016 that Rybka achieved from 2006-10. If so then Houdart will indeed have proved himself to be the strongest programmer on the planet.

I simply do not understand your suggestion that Houdart is "worthy of praise by all programmers". The point about Rybka is that its appearance was followed by a measurable increase in the strength of the leading commercial programs - as pointed out by Soren Riis. This was partly because the engine authors tuned their programs to Rybka over a period of time and partly because (perhaps!) some of Rybka's code was revealed in open source clones. There simply has not been time for the main commercial programmers to benefit from Houdini in the way they benefited from Rybka.