Strelka 2.0 B running for the IPON ...

[Houdini]

Can you find an example of the commercial engine teams of Junior, Hiarcs, Naum or Fritz publishing test results against Stockfish or Critter?

Robert

Offhand no, but all this is skirting around the real question, which is why not do something to get Houdini verified as not being an Ippo ripoff?

Cheers,
Graham.

I understand that you would like to gain some certainty about your beloved Houdini, but your transforming this into a "why don't you get Houdini verified" question doesn't relate at all to my intervention. I was talking generally about "strong and free competitors".

The lack of examples with Stockfish or Critter clearly demonstrates my (rather obvious) point that commercial engine teams rarely publish test results in which their product gets demolished by a strong and free competitor. The reason for this is called "marketing".

Cheers,
Robert

[Graham Banks]

The lack of examples with Stockfish or Critter clearly demonstrates my (rather obvious) point that commercial engine teams rarely publish test results in which their product gets demolished by a strong and free competitor. The reason for this is called "marketing".

Cheers,
Robert

Obviously, although you can see that the Loop beta testers are quite happy to such results, and Ingo (who is part of the Shredder team) is quite comfortable in doing so.
Perhaps there are others too (I'm not sure), but yes it has a lot to do with how one wants to market their engine.

Cheers,
Graham.

[Dann Corbit]

Can you find an example of the commercial engine teams of Junior, Hiarcs, Naum or Fritz publishing test results against Stockfish or Critter?

Robert

Offhand no, but all this is skirting around the real question, which is why not do something to get Houdini verified as not being an Ippo ripoff?

Cheers,
Graham.

The IPPO* stuff is in the public domain:
http://ippolit.wikispaces.com/search/vi ... +domain%22

That means you can't rip it off. There are literally no software rights at all associated with anything that has been placed in the public domain. It can even be hijacked. For instance, you can take a public domain project, make a bunch of valuable improvements, copyright those, and then the original project cannot have those improvements without your permission.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

That is from a legal point of view. As for moral issues, that is another story and [in addition] there seems to be a very strong backlash against using someone else's code in the chess community.

As for *morally* right and wrong, that is for each to decide and I can understand why people might choose either side of that fence and I am not even sure where I stand on it (when it comes to someone else -- I do have strong opinions about *me* doing something like that).

Legally, public domain means {my paraphrasal}:
Do whatever you darn well please with this and we have no say in it henceforth forever.

BTW, there are *excellent* projects that are public domain such as Sqlite:
http://www.sqlite.org/
http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

[gerold]

Yes, the links are bogus though. The statements predated his later admissions that Strelka was heavily based on RE of Rybka, though there were a number of parts of the RE that were incomprehensible to him. He also added parts of Fruit and other things, which was what made it such a strange patchwork piece of code. His correspondence with Vas after he came clean was quite enlightening. I got it from ChessOk who translated the messages between the two to ease communication.

In case you wonder why I got the correspondence at all, which would be a perfectly valid question, it is because I was asked to mediate a situation created after Osipov suggested Strelka could be included in Chess Assistant packages as a flavor/variant of Rybka (not Fruit).

Hehehehe....I weren't aware of that....sweet

Yes that is a bit interesting.
Osipov did say something along them lines before. I thought he
was joking. Guess not.

[Osipov Jury]

Yes, the links are bogus though. The statements predated his later admissions that Strelka was heavily based on RE of Rybka, though there were a number of parts of the RE that were incomprehensible to him. He also added parts of Fruit and other things, which was what made it such a strange patchwork piece of code. His correspondence with Vas after he came clean was quite enlightening. I got it from ChessOk who translated the messages between the two to ease communication.

I never wrote to Vasik that the Strelka is based on the RE code of Rybka. I wrote him that I studied the code of Rybka with disassembler.

[AdminX]

Can you find an example of the commercial engine teams of Junior, Hiarcs, Naum or Fritz publishing test results against Stockfish or Critter?

Robert

Offhand no, but all this is skirting around the real question, which is why not do something to get Houdini verified as not being an Ippo ripoff?

Cheers,
Graham.

The IPPO* stuff is in the public domain:
http://ippolit.wikispaces.com/search/vi ... +domain%22

That means you can't rip it off. There are literally no software rights at all associated with anything that has been placed in the public domain. It can even be hijacked. For instance, you can take a public domain project, make a bunch of valuable improvements, copyright those, and then the original project cannot have those improvements without your permission.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

That is from a legal point of view. As for moral issues, that is another story and [in addition] there seems to be a very strong backlash against using someone else's code in the chess community.

As for *morally* right and wrong, that is for each to decide and I can understand why people might choose either side of that fence and I am not even sure where I stand on it (when it comes to someone else -- I do have strong opinions about *me* doing something like that).

Legally, public domain means {my paraphrasal}:
Do whatever you darn well please with this and we have no say in it henceforth forever.

BTW, there are *excellent* projects that are public domain such as Sqlite:
http://www.sqlite.org/
http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

Plus +1

[Damir]

No need to decompile it. Houdini is improved single version of Robbolito... which is now MP functionable with couple of things changed, that only Robert Houdart knows

[Albert Silver]

Yes, the links are bogus though. The statements predated his later admissions that Strelka was heavily based on RE of Rybka, though there were a number of parts of the RE that were incomprehensible to him. He also added parts of Fruit and other things, which was what made it such a strange patchwork piece of code. His correspondence with Vas after he came clean was quite enlightening. I got it from ChessOk who translated the messages between the two to ease communication.

I never wrote to Vasik that the Strelka is based on the RE code of Rybka. I wrote him that I studied the code of Rybka with disassembler.

Are you claiming that you did not suggest Strelka be packaged with Rybka as a variant/flavor of it? That was the reason I was even brought in. As a variant of his program, his permission was required, and frankly, the idea wasn't a happy one since it wasn't just a variant, it was a variant in which the source code was widespread. This was actually the Pandora's Box you really opened. Clones and derivatives had existed before, but this was the first time someone decided to spam the source code everywhere ALSO.

[Osipov Jury]

Are you claiming that you did not suggest Strelka be packaged with Rybka as a variant/flavor of it? That was the reason I was even brought in. As a variant of his program, his permission was required, and frankly, the idea wasn't a happy one since it wasn't just a variant, it was a variant in which the source code was widespread. This was actually the Pandora's Box you really opened. Clones and derivatives had existed before, but this was the first time someone decided to spam the source code everywhere ALSO.

Convekta, i.e. Viktor Zakharov, made me an offer to release the Strelka for mobile systems. Convekta created a graphical interface, but the engine was missing. Vas has promised to make a mobile version of the Rybka, but did not. Convekta turned to me and several other programmers to use their engines. Not together with Rybka or as a variant of Rybka, but instead of it.
I accepted this offer and sent the source code for porting.
But then Vas inexplicably vetoed the project. And that surprised not only me, but Viktor too.

[Osipov Jury]

My letter to Vas in response to his questions (translate by V.Zakharov):

Code: Select all

Hi Vas,
 
 First of all I would like to excuse for my public pronouncements, that
 Rybka was developed on the basis of Fruit. There were only subjective
 guesses and I didn't have right to share unchecked thoughts publicly.
 
 Unfortunatelly sometimes I am able to perform unadequite actions, that
 can be approved only by my current heavy psychologic state.
 
 Beleive me I am sincere fan of your talants. For future I promise not
 to do any steps that can be bring any damage to you.
 
 Now the answers on your questions:
 
 1) I started Rybka code research at January, 2007. I did this time to
 time till April. I can't calculate exactly how much time I spent.
 I consider myself as amateur in dissassembly, so my experience can't be
 considered as representative. I guess that Dark Avenger from Brasil -
 most serious professional in this domain. I think he will not have
 problems FULLY to reverse Rybka code and to understand the algorithms.
 But this is only about Rybka 1.0.beta. I am sure that similar work
 concerning latest Rybka versions is practically impossible. They
 contains much more code, so to understand the algorithms it will take
 a few years of heavy work. I am amazed how you was able to write so
 much in a short period. ?!!!
 
 2) I always worked alone. There was no team. Even there were no people
 to discuss my ideas with somebody.
 
 3) I researched the code of another chess programs. But it was long
 time ago (7 years or so). These were old by today measuring versions
 of Hiarcs and Fritz. Fritz is most sophisticated. I saw that it was
 written on assembly language, and some tricks were used that were
 hardly to transform to high-level language (sometimes impossibly).
 
 4) I am not going to clone Rybka or any other chess program in future.
 It is not interesting to me. I have a lot of my own ideas that I would
 like to implement. The trial to write the program on Rybka basis was
 only an experiment and may be a bad joke. I think it was a silly action.
 
 5) I am going to develop my own original ideas in future. But I
 am not going to release any commercial product. I am not going to
 compete with you or other chess programmers. It is just interesting to
 me to solve difficult tasks and to have pleasure from this exploration
 process.
 
 6) I didn't give to anybody source code of latest Strelka version. But
 this code doesn't differ much from the first version. Changes in
 algorithm are minimal. So I can say that source code of first Strelka
 have Sergey Markov, Dan Corbit and Bryan Hoffmann. I would like to ask
 your advice can I have moral right (first of all before you) to present
 Strelka source code to a few more programmers? If you say that it is
 wrong, I will follow your advice. No need to describe reasons for this.
 Just agree or no.
 
 Best regards, Jury

Reply of Vas:

Code: Select all

Hi Yury,

thanks very much for your interesting comments.

In my view, it would be good if you continued working and released an
engine with all components in your own hand. Studying Rybka and using what
you have learned is perfectly normal. Selling your engine is also normal -
you can find a distributor to handle all details and most users will use
it for free anyway  

If you prefer to work only on selected aspects, I can consider to give you
public permission to use selected Rybka 1.0 components such as some of my
eval tables. Please ask me and I will think about it.

I would discourage any of the following:

1) Working in secret with no public releases.
2) Releasing partly-cloned engine without original author permission.
3) Releasing current source code.

Of course, these issues are all your business. I can only give my personal
opinion.

Anyway, good luck. If there are any things in Rybka which you found
interesting, please don't hesitate to ask me about them.

Best regards,
Vas