No +100 Elo for SF on Windows for me

[AndrewGrant]

Albert goes a long way back to somewhere in the past century, 1999 or even further before CCC was founded. Someone here wrote once that Albert was the person she would like to meet the most in person For me that is enough of a validation of Albert, he can't be all that bad. He is a good person at heart.

This is a good sentiment, for right after the DeusX-leela-clone-lied-to-TCEC-about-it Drama. People make mistakes. People who have been around for a long time are almost certain to make some mistakes. We should attone, forgive, and move on.

Unfortunately then this repeated itself right after with Fat Fritz II. Same exact deal: Clone an engine, lie about it, benefit from it in some way, get caught, gaslight and blame the world once caught.

I can only imagine a 3rd such scenario will be here shortly. Who knows what form it will take.

Good Person => Good Person who made a mistake but can learn from it => Repeated Fraudster. I use those words not as "mud slinging" or insults, but as a genuine label to describe a person based on his actions. Its not insults, its facts.

[Dann Corbit]

Albert never lied about anything.
In my opinion, he did nothing wrong.
Yes, he cloned an engine.
He explained that very clearly.
Yes, he benefitted from that.
There is no inherent crime in benefitting from something.
I suggest the following:
Enter into an email conversation with Albert and get his side of the story.
I guarantee that if you do that, and are a reasonable person, you will not be so full of vitriol.
But I doubt very much that you have the courage to do that.
It is so much easier to play God.

[AndrewGrant]

Albert never lied about anything.
In my opinion, he did nothing wrong.

Uh...? Some exerts from the settlement between Stockfish and ChessBase suggests otherwise lol... Perhaps you missed the boat on that one, which is understandable, as the number of fraudsters running around has been quite high in recent years. It can be hard (and saddening) to keep track of them all.

For example:

> The parties agree that the license obligations of the GNU General Public License, Version 3, (hereinafter "GPL-3.0") for the products Fat Fritz 2 and Houdini 6 have not been complied with

> The defendant undertakes to refrain from distributing and/or making publicly available the Stockfish software for a period of one year after the conclusion of this settlement, whether alone or as part of a product with additional software

> The Defendant undertakes to refrain from distributing the Stockfish software or making it publicly available after the expiry of the prohibition provided for in section 1, whether alone or as part of a product with further software, without fully complying with the license conditions of the GPL-3.0

Usually when you make a legal settlement, in which you agree to do no further wrong doing, one can reasonable surmise that wrong doing was done in the first place.

[Modern Times]

Usually when you make a legal settlement, in which you agree to do no further wrong doing, one can reasonable surmise that wrong doing was done in the first place.

Or else Chessbase were just cutting their losses and protecting their business from further ruinously expensive legal fees.

Important to note that The judge never ruled that the GPL had been breached, the two parties "agreed" between themselves that it had. Am I wrong about that ?

[AndrewGrant]

Usually when you make a legal settlement, in which you agree to do no further wrong doing, one can reasonable surmise that wrong doing was done in the first place.

Or else Chessbase were just cutting their losses and protecting their business from further ruinously expensive legal fees.

> The parties agree that the license obligations of the GNU General Public License, Version 3, (hereinafter "GPL-3.0") for the products Fat Fritz 2 and Houdini 6 have not been complied with

Admission of guilt is an admission of guilt, even if there is some (hypothetical) high level play going on to save time and money.

[Graham Banks]

We are way too quick in this community to ostracize people who've made valuable contributions to computer chess.

Forgiveness seems to be a very rare commodity.

[AndrewGrant]

Important to note that The judge never ruled that the GPL had been breached, the two parties "agreed" between themselves that it had. Am I wrong about that ?

No you are not wrong. Which means Chessbase (Albert) themselves admitted wrong doing. As opposed to a court finding it. Courts are not perfect, but when the defendant admits the wrong doing on their own, I take that in some value.

[AndrewGrant]

We are way too quick in this community to ostracize people who've made valuable contributions to computer chess.

Forgiveness seems to be a very rare commodity.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
How many times will you be taken a fool, Graham? Norman has gotten you 4+ times now lol.

[Graham Banks]

We are way too quick in this community to ostracize people who've made valuable contributions to computer chess.

Forgiveness seems to be a very rare commodity.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
How many times will you be taken a fool, Graham? Norman has gotten you 4+ times now lol.

Norman might have done some dubious things in the past, but my understanding is that the latest versions of Fire are fine.
Both Norm and I are retired gentlemen who just want to enjoy computer chess without getting involved in any pettiness or nastiness.

[Graham Banks]

And I recall all of the nonsense regarding Rybka well after Fabien Letouzey had posted the following:

"...I am sorry to say that whether an engine is someone's "own work" makes little sense to me, although I understand that tournament directors would like a clear yes or no.

The reason is that all engines, whether amateur or commercial, share most of the techniques. Alpha-beta (of which PVS, NegaScout and MTD(f) are only derivatives), iterative deepening, check extensions, null move, etc ... are shared by most and have been published, mostly by researchers, some of them more than 30 years ago! Sure there are many different ways to represent the board and pieces but it only affects speed, which rarely amounts to more than a few dozen Elo Points.

There is one component that so far is distinct in each engine (although some older ones were probably "inspired" by Crafty): the evaluation function. But there again the evaluation features are hardly ever very original: the principles of sound chess play can be found in hundreds of books. It's hardly a secret that rooks should be placed on open files, something that Fruit does not even know (though rook mobility partly emulates this piece of knowledge).

So what is left for improvisation? A lot of course, otherwise all engines would be equal. But say in terms of quantity of code they don't represent so much. Among this "lot" I think there is a large place for things that cannot be extracted: programming style and ways of linking engine components, making them work together. Not something that most would consider as a "chess-engine technique" like null move.

OK let's stop here and do a little sum up with Fruit in mind: I can't think of a search feature in it that was not described before. Ditto for evaluation terms (except perhaps a few drawish-endgame rules that activate in one game in a hundred). There are specific principles that I follow in Fruit that gives it a personality somewhat (like never truncating the PV and making sure that mate-depth claims are always correct), but they probably have no impact on strength at all and could even hurt a little.

Can I claim that I have written it all on my own? "Yes", I typed all the code myself. Without help??? Certainly not, hence my point: "it makes no sense".

Sorry for the dramatic style ... One positive point now: instead of seeing engine authors competing against each others, I see them as cooperating (mostly indirectly) and making progress together, since they have so much in common, whether they want it or not.

My opinion anyway ... "