mhull wrote:Don wrote:... he has made an important contribution to computer chess.
What do you feel his contributions have been? Selling a strong product isn't most people's idea of a contribution (I mean if you have to pay for the thing). Contributions are what you give without thought or promise of a return.
This is like saying that teachers make no contribution to society since they get payed.
Selling a strong product IS a HUGE contribution. It's just not appreciated by stingy people who want something for nothing. Whenever you make a purchase both parties should feel they profited otherwise there would be no transaction.
But it goes WAY beyond that. In another post I mentioned that the very presence of a "strongest" program telegraphs to everyone else that something is possible and the very possibility makes everyone else push forward. It's like the 4 minute mile, or the space race program - it would have never happened if the Soviets had not "embarrassed" the western world into pushing forward.
There were unintended contributions too. Because of Rybka we have Robo, Ippo, critter, Houdini, firebird, Stockfish, Komodo, ....
Part of my inspiration for resuming chess programming was the interest generated by Rybka in the computer chess community.
Likewise, Fruit was an inspiration to many because they showed that you could build a very strong program without any radically new ideas - just solid engineering. That's why your position that Vas "stole" Fruit such a ridiculous notion - even if Vas had literally started with that source code it did not provide anything other than a few days head start and even that was probably negated by the necessity to completely rewrite whatever he initially had in order to make any serious progress.
The Fruit argument is just noise and has absolutely no relevance to the real issues going on here and I think you should drop it for your own credibility. I think some of things you are saying may be valid or at least arguable, but pinning everything on this one thing just makes you look like you are flailing.