Fruit vs. Toga poll

[Peter Aloysius]

yeah, right.

Toga and Fruit both allowed to enter. Then another toga cloner will ask to participate too, and since Toga is allowed to enter, then all version/modification of Fruit must be allowed too. Same principle apply to all Glaurung version, scorpion version, and soon, what we'll have is not Computer Chess Tournament, but Clone Chess Tournament. Or Derivatives Chess Tournament.

[Peter Aloysius]

Hey, I should create my own "derivatives" of Toga or Glaurung and enter it

I can easily alter about 300 lines of code, that quite much. I can call it "very different" than original, so it's not a clone.

Maybe the engine resulted is about 50 points weaker, but it still much stronger than Petir.

[playjunior]

Hey, I should create my own "derivatives" of Toga or Glaurung and enter it

I can easily alter about 300 lines of code, that quite much. I can call it "very different" than original, so it's not a clone.

Maybe the engine resulted is about 50 points weaker, but it still much stronger than Petir.

When you manage to take the strongest open-source engine and make it 100 points stronger, this would be a big achievement. IMO the less lines of code you change the smarter you actually are. 100 lines of code -> 100 elo improvement means what-1 elo for 1 line? Not bad eh?

Why shouldn't be that encouraged?

[swami]

Hey, I should create my own "derivatives" of Toga or Glaurung and enter it

I can easily alter about 300 lines of code, that quite much. I can call it "very different" than original, so it's not a clone.

Maybe the engine resulted is about 50 points weaker, but it still much stronger than Petir.

You will have to get the approval from Fabien in order to enter the tournament. Only one Fruit version (original or derivatives) is allowed to enter. Fabien has the option of choosing the best derivative to represent Fruit.

In this CCT, Fabien has entered the main program Fruit instead of Toga. Maybe he had given particpation rights to Ryan. So it's gotta be either Fruit or one of the derivatives of Fruit. Fabien/Ryan chose the main program over the derivatives.

I believe the beta version of Fruit that Ryan has, is much stronger than Toga if Wbec results is any indication.

[swami]

Hi Ray,

Indeed, my reply was all ready as well but when I hit the submit button the thread was gone. Here was my comment:

I fully appreciate how programmers that have spent hundreds or thousands of hours creating their own programmes from scratch feel, but in my view

- Toga is stronger than the last public versions of Fruit
- it has probably diverged quite a bit from Fruit by now
- it abides by the GPL and is 100% legal
- open source is a good thing and should be supported

So I'd say let it participate. Even if Fruit was there as well.

Peter Alloysius was right in refuting your point above, Just noticed his post and wondered to whom he was replying to, it turns out that he was replying to you. I strongly disagree with giving Ok to participaton of both Fruit and Toga. Nobody would want to face two versions of a single program in the same tournament.

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

As far as tournaments go, all of the rules prohibited clones prior to
the release of Fruit much less Toga. The only reason I could see the
ICGA allowing cluster Toga in was to allow a scientific experiment on
the clustering of a chess program.

This is completely false! Clones have always been allowed, as they should be. Cluster Toga was allowed because there was permission from all of its authors, including Fabien.

Requiring permissions from the author(s) and not allowing one author in multiple teams solves the problem completely.

If the original author allows a clone to enter, what possible objection could you have to a clone entering? How is this different from a program which is a team effort?

If there are many clones of a single program, the decision might be difficult for the original author and he might have to disappoint many people. Well, though luck! Go write your own program, lazy bastards

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

When my program ships with a license that says that you are free to do whatever you like with it (apart from making it proprietary), what right do I have to tell you later that you are not allowed to use it in some tournament?

The license governs copyright and distribution. A third party (tournament organizer) can put up the (additional) rules he wants and no license you write can change that.

[Peter Aloysius]

Hey, I should create my own "derivatives" of Toga or Glaurung and enter it

I can easily alter about 300 lines of code, that quite much. I can call it "very different" than original, so it's not a clone.

Maybe the engine resulted is about 50 points weaker, but it still much stronger than Petir.

When you manage to take the strongest open-source engine and make it 100 points stronger, this would be a big achievement. IMO the less lines of code you change the smarter you actually are. 100 lines of code -> 100 elo improvement means what-1 elo for 1 line? Not bad eh?

Why shouldn't be that encouraged?

you don't get my sarcasm, don't you?

I would not do such shameless thing

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

If the Toga developers haven't contributed a single idea, then why is the latest Toga almost 100 elo stronger than Fruit 2.2.1? That seems to paint Fabien as inept (which he is far from being) because some amateurs could rewrite a few lines of code and get 100 elo improvement.

The reasoning here is really completely flawed. If tomorrow there is a post here presenting a new pruning algorithm (which can often be 5 lines of code or so), giving an almost universal 100 elo gain, then almost any random person with an editor can make Fruit 100 elo stronger. This doesn't mean they contributed much new ideas...let alone hard work.

(This isn't even hypothetical...most of the improvement in the first Toga's was futility pruning and lazy eval. Well known ideas which Fabien didn't get around to implementing yet, and for which you could lift the code from other open source engines)

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

When you manage to take the strongest open-source engine and make it 100 points stronger, this would be a big achievement. IMO the less lines of code you change the smarter you actually are. 100 lines of code -> 100 elo improvement means what-1 elo for 1 line? Not bad eh?

Why shouldn't be that encouraged?

This should be encouraged.

What shouldn't be encouraged is taking an open source engines, fiddling a bit with it to get an elo gain of -50 to +50 elo (whatever!), changing the name, claiming it as your own, distributing it as binary and trying to enter it into tournaments without the original authors knowledge.

We've had a lot of that but fairly little of what you describe.