About Obsidian

[DmitriyFrosty]

At the time, no high similarity in search.cpp I was not managed to found

[Ras]

Obsidian timeman.cpp
Stockfish timeman.cpp

Basic stuff is always going to be similar, given that it's the same problem domain. The only noticeable, non-obvious similarity are the constants 0.8 and 0.88 - but constants and even concepts do not fall under copyright anyway.

[DmitriyFrosty]

Obsidian timeman.cpp
Stockfish timeman.cpp

Basic stuff is always going to be similar

Yes, the same can be said for other code. Does this mean that it is now useless to suspect any engine of cloning, because most of them have the same algorithms? By the way, when chess engine considered as clone and how much code need to be original?

[Ras]

Yes, the same can be said for other code.

I pointed out one of the core segments of a chess engine, the search algo itself - and guess where you didn't find stuff?

Does this mean that it is now useless to suspect any engine of cloning, because most of them have the same algorithms?

Algorithms are not copyrightable, neither are constants. With neural networks, the debate is somewhat open. What does fall under copyright is only the expression of ideas in specific code, and also derivatives from that, incl. translation into other languages. Expressing the same ideas in one's own ways, i.e. not directly derived from the original code, is not a clone.

By the way, when chess engine considered as clone and how much code need to be original?

It's considered as a clone when it uses the original codebase without meaningful improvements. If there are meaningful improvements, it's a derivative, but that may become so much that the engine may be regarded as its own work.

What cloners usually do: take SF, modify some parameters, make it actually worse because they don't have the testing resources, overwrite the copyright notice and then release that as closed source engine. This is clearly not the case with Obsidian.

[mvanthoor]

It's certainly seems possible to me that the author has simply:
lost interest
a family matter intervenes
...or any one of a million other possible life issues that routinely occur, does in fact occur.

But to immediately categorizing it it as a 'clone' because of that?
wow...

Nah. I'm not even saying that very strong engines are always clones. I state that it's impossible to write a 3400/3500 Elo chess engines from scratch in a few weeks without cutting lots of corners (especially when starting from 0 with regard to knowledge about chess programming); where those cut corners could also be big pieces of code from one engine or another, without cloning the whole thing verbatim. There are WAY too many 3400/3500 Elo engines that just popped onto the scene as "Hi, I wrote this chess engine during my christmas holiday. Could you take a look at and point out where it can be improved?" Then it turns out to be 3400/3500 Elo; as if the author didn't know already. I just don't believe it.

[Frank Quisinsky]

That's exactly the point.
One of my questions in the Stockfish interview I made for around 14 years.

A small correction to 3400/3500 Elo ...
How can an engine start with more than 2500 Elo in the first version or reach more than 2500 Elo in a very short time?
Because 15 years ago it was a sensation when a new engine started with 2500 Elo.

For the year 2024 I expect about 30-40 unknown / new engines by for me complete unknown people with more than 3100 Elo. After 45 years of computer chess all this is often not easy to understand.

But the most important thing is that all developers enjoy their work. And maybe new ideas will be the end result, that would be a great thing for the whole community. Its to late for keep the current strong ideas secret.

All the strong and very new engines are not really a problem!

The problem is rather that older computer chess people have lost their interest for the reason that they believe that all that is new and strong is a copy of other things. People, I have so many years of nice contacts who have lost their interest for a while. In 10 years we will have 500x more programmers as people like to test engines. And in reality, club players only look at the strongest engine, because they have no time to look in detail at the work of all programmers. Its a pity ... because in the most of engines are so many work and inside are many of own and strong ideas. Sure about it but nobody is able to notice about it. I lost for a long time the overview.

[JacquesRW]

How can an engine start with more than 2500 Elo in the first version or reach more than 2500 Elo in a very short time?
Because 15 years ago it was a sensation when a new engine started with 2500 Elo.

Because 15 years ago there was less knowledge of what was good? A beginner can easily write a 2500 rated engine in a very short period of time, without looking at any other engines, just by writing a bug-free engine with the basic search features that you can find on CPW (null move pruning, reverse futility pruning, etc) and a basic piece-square table evaluation.

For the year 2024 I expect about 30-40 unknown / new engines by for me complete unknown people with more than 3100 Elo. After 45 years of computer chess all this is often not easy to understand.

They'll use NNUE, its **hundreds** of ELO. Maybe its less for top engines compared to their HCE, but for new engines with incredibly simple evaluations it'll catapult them past 3000 elo with almost no effort.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Jamie,

completely different opinion!
A beginner will never be able to write a chess engine with 2500 Elo.
Or all the programmers in the past were stupid.

I remember ... the first 100 Winboard engines and all the detail pages I created for each of the engines. I collect any information to the programmers, have with most mail contacts and all are happy that he can send information to me.

Note:
This site was for a long time the number 1 of all chess sites in WWW (FIDE stat). With around 3000 - 4000 different IP addresses daily.

The strongest free engine was for a long time Crafty. In the German "Computer Chess Newspaper" a very talented programmer, Frank Schneider (Gromit, Anaconda, Gingko ... Fritz) wrote that it seems not possible to write a chess program stronger than Crafty. 2400 Elo is obviously a limit that is difficult to overcome. OK, we are thinking Crafty is playing with 2500 ... but years later we know ... it was not more as 2400 Elo.

A programmer from Sweden sent me Ruffian. An unknown programmer and Ruffian are directly on place 2 (Shredder on 1 for a long time). He wanted a commercial project with our free Arena GUI. And after I did that and we won Leiden, I got some mails here like ... all is a clone of Shredder and stuff like that. Ruffian was a 2600 Elo program. We send the sources to the tournament director in Leiden, but never an apology. An isult that an unkown programmer created an 2600 Elo program.

Do you know who started Neural-Network?

A programmer buys sources from Nightmare (there are two Nightmare engines, one Nightmare from a German programmer and one Nightmare from a Dutch programmer). He buys the sources because he has ideas about neural networks and has written a book about them. He used a ready program only for his Neural-Network code. In Leiden he gave an example from his book to all the other participating programmers. But more or less ... the participating programmers are thinking ... two many games are necessary and it is not possible to train such a program. It takes too many years and all this is not successful. Learning ideas are all the years not really successfull ... why such a new idea. Often I saw that different of the participating programmers even laughed about it. All this in the year 1998 or it was 1999.

And today nobody talks about such things.

It is always the same with good ideas that different people have had in computer chess. All the ideas are without names available in all the sources of so many chess programs ... of course with GPL3.

I know 50 or more programmers where lost interest in chess programming. Many feel proudly hurt and avoid the community.

All the bad topics about clones in the past. All the programmers who know it better as others. Often a Kindergarten!

You must be a very hard computer-chess freak if you after so many years start an eng-eng match. Believe me ... 17 Threats of lawsuits I got and I do all for free in the past. Simply empty air ... no of the 17 do it. From companys from persons which generate problems in my own fora in the past and so one. Free rider, jelousy persons and so one.

And how often a programmer like so write such things you do in the past.
I have stopped counting for many years.

Best
Frank

Often I wish me that I never start with this hobby.
In winboard times I had 4700 contacts in my TheBat adress book. How many sites I created, support I gave and how many information goes over my mail address. Again, you must be really a very hard guy if you not lost the interest on this hobby for around 1.000 or more reasons ... I don't know. I wish me peace in the community and I hope that all have today fun with our great hobby. I wish me that many more "Jamies" are develops a chess program with such nice name, like Akimbo. I wish me aggressive persons, because they give also motiviation for many others. I wish me so many things around computer chess ... because we have a nice hobby. But all the information I got and have today in my brain ... simply can't and won't use it any more.

[Frank Quisinsky]

https://www.schach-welt.de/schach/compu ... stalba-eng

Read it ...
Normally a young programmer should start with examples like Tord gave...
And not with 2800 Elo sources where all the ideas are inside.

This is my personal opinion and I am not the only one.

But maybe time has changed!

Again, my personal opinion is 60:40 or 70:30 for free sources, but often I get a stomach ache when I see that many programs do the same and I can't see any difference in playing style.

Note:
With every new strong available chess program we lost programmers with a lot of knowledge, because the lost his interest on chess programming. Some are jealous, others think ... I work 10 years on my program and a new available program is directly 100-200 Elo stronger in the first version.

This is the point, the younger generation does not think about it!!

But await from persons like me that we have for all understandings!
very one-sided

[smatovic]

...

I can imagine there are highly skilled, talented and educated engine programmers out there, and the development speed might have increased significantly cos of multiple reasons, nevertheless, I share John's opinion:

[...]
How does it improve competition if everybody contributes to Stockfish?

The problem space is simply too massive for an individual to come up with code that equals Stockfish. Without significant copy-paste.
That's why we have the same program basically. I see no problem with Fire for example. It's as original as any other.

Crafty for example around 3,000 ELO while Hyatt worked on this project like 40 years professionally. This is where super originality leads you.

Of course the modern society only rewards winners and the others can go home. So here we are.
[...]

.,.,and, some people still can not distinguish between science and engineering, theory and practice, ideas and implementations.

Further, one could criticize the test-driven development of engines, w/o working out the theory behind:

From Esoteric to Transcendental Chess Programming?
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=76286


***edit***

"Fruit fly races on steroids?"

Unfortunately, the competitive and commercial aspects of making computers play chess have taken precedence over using chess as a scientific domain. It is as if the geneticists after 1910 had organized fruit fly races and concentrated their efforts on breeding fruit flies that could win these races.

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Artifi ... n_McCarthy

And, as already mentioned in another post, the two most important recent impacts in computer chess came from the outside. Lc0 is an open source adaption of AlphaZero, an generalization from AlphaGo applied on Go, Shogi and Chess. The NNUE technique came from the Shogi world to chess.

--
Srdja