Ferdy wrote:Stockfish is free, that is not cheating.
I'm not sure what difference it makes that SF is free (whether as in beer or as in GPL).
Time will come that an engine will be able to determine the result of the position (W/L/D) on most positions including positions in the early phase of the game. If that engine is free, it is all right everybody has access.
Apart from the fact that that time will not come, this is not what we are talking about.
If someone uses non-free Komodo to create a book, then that is just as much cheating or non-cheating as it is to create a book using free Stockfish. At least, I really do not see a relevant difference.
Ferdy wrote:Stockfish is free, that is not cheating.
I'm not sure what difference it makes that SF is free (whether as in beer or as in GPL).
Time will come that an engine will be able to determine the result of the position (W/L/D) on most positions including positions in the early phase of the game. If that engine is free, it is all right everybody has access.
Apart from the fact that that time will not come, this is not what we are talking about.
If someone uses non-free Komodo to create a book, then that is just as much cheating or non-cheating as it is to create a book using free Stockfish. At least, I really do not see a relevant difference.
We are talking about Stockfish and not Komodo. It is fair when the engine that is used to help build the book is free.
Ferdy wrote:Building a book based on free strong engine is not cheating because everybody can take the engine and use it - playing field is even.
I'd say that building a book using a free program like Stockfish is more ethical than doing so with a closed program like Komodo. The exact status of cheating would be dependent upon the rules in use for a given event. In any case, the use of a third party knowledge source should be disclosed.
Personally, I don't see any issue with it, no matter what the program used.
You aren't using either program in the actual competition, and you are using your own heuristics and methods to assimilate and use the data collected, no different than if you used publicly available PGN files of real games, which everybody does.
Ferdy wrote:Building a book based on free strong engine is not cheating because everybody can take the engine and use it - playing field is even
How about non-free hardware?
And how about using a private brain, not available to anyone else?
Obviously using a non-free engine for building an opening book is not cheating, regardless of whether non-free means that one has to pay money for it, that it is not available at all to anyone else, or that its source code is not "free".
The moves are available to all. Anyone could have typed in those moves. That is sufficient.
Ferdy wrote:Building a book based on free strong engine is not cheating because everybody can take the engine and use it - playing field is even
How about non-free hardware?
Creating an opening book using an engine that is not yours, say a strong engine like SF to check every positions in the book is not cheating. Are we going to discuss the kind of HW used in creating such opening book and/or used by the engine in the analysis of the positions in the book?
