SzG wrote:Shortly after Toga was introduced to the community, it was found that it is a clone of Fruit. Its author claimed he made an 'error' by not giving credit to Fabien, but he claimed he did not know he had to. He apologized and was forgiven. What is more, he is now regarded as a respectful engine author and Toga has become an example of how 'fruitful' open source GPL-ed software is.
Now there is Norman who did the same thing (in fact worse because of accepting money for a cloned engine). He's been caught just like Thomas was caught before. But he apologizes and refunds the money. Now can he not be forgiven as well if he makes his program open source?
I mean if Xyclops can be made legal why should we discard it? It is in effect a new Fruit/Toga and it may rise to unexpected heights. As Toga says 'I am Toga based on Fruit' Xyclops might say 'I am Xylops based on Toga/Fruit'.
T tally in agreement with you, Rybka was even improved with Fruit´s code, as far as I know, and Vas right now have made money from this, and nobody have claim that Vas is dishonest, maybe Xyclops has much potential and can be a great Rybka competitor in the future Who knows
Thomas not only apologized to the chess community but also continued to make positive contributions to the GPL. Norm has not apologized nor as far as I know admitted to his wrong doing. Norm happens to be unlucky in a way as he seems to have committed 3 GPL violations and 1 violation of software that belongs directly to the FSF.
Ryan Benitez wrote:Thomas not only apologized to the chess community but also continued to make positive contributions to the GPL. Norm has not apologized nor as far as I know admitted to his wrong doing. Norm happens to be unlucky in a way as he seems to have committed 3 GPL violations and 1 violation of software that belongs directly to the FSF.
I agree with Tord in this discussion but it is not correct that Norm did not apologize.
The problem is that he did not make his program open source.
It is good that Norm admitted what he did was wrong.
I was expecting some kind of personal apologies though. I have spent CPU time running his engine, and xyclops stole promotion spots to other engines in my tournament.
Let's say I checked first versions of xyclops when I got them (first one was on Feb. 28th). and found nothing wrong. After checking it all again, the suspicious Fruit/Toga strings appear in 1.1c-update5 that I got on March 13th and in all later versions I got.
tally in agreement with you, Rybka was even improved with Fruit´s code, as far as I know, and Vas right now have made money from this, and nobody have claim that Vas is dishonest, maybe Xyclops has much potential and can be a great Rybka competitor in the future 
Who knows