I'm in doubt if RobboLito is a clone

[peter]

Anything is possible. Probability is a different issue. To do that much work to make the thing look as it looks would imply some justification for doing this. What would this be??? What gain to they recoup for the effort expended?

If one had Rybka's code (2, 3 or 4) but would want to pretend he had gotten it by disassembling, or someone would like to make modification of freeware- code less readable and less recognizable, wouldn't this be a way to do it?

[bob]

Anything is possible. Probability is a different issue. To do that much work to make the thing look as it looks would imply some justification for doing this. What would this be??? What gain to they recoup for the effort expended?

If one had Rybka's code (2, 3 or 4) but would want to pretend he had gotten it by disassembling, or someone would like to make modification of freeware- code less readable and less recognizable, wouldn't this be a way to do it?

I am a strong believer in the "occam's razor" principle.

[peter]

I am a strong believer in the "occam's razor" principle.

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Wilhem von Ockham, quoting this sentence, rather going back to Aristoteles maybe, as far as I know, didn't support the theory fully himself, as for a theistic view he had too.

[Volker Pittlik]

... as far as I know, didn't support the theory fully himself, as for a theistic view he had too.

What -if you are right- doesn't disprove that principle.

vp

[peter]

What -if you are right- doesn't disprove that principle.

Of course not. Principles never can be disproved in principle. Matter is always, when they apply.

[bob]

Do you realize how difficult it is to remove comments?

Given that C doesn't allow nesting them, I'd say it's trivial? Did I miss anything?

(I don't disagree on anything else you said - just nitpicking here)

The only way I know to do it is by hand. Going the pre-processor route is a pain in the ass if you want to release the code because macro expansions are done by the preprocessor and that would wreck the source if the macros depend on the target architecture which is not known until someone uses the source.

I did this a while back when fooling around with the nintendo DS guys. And it was somewhat painful. Edit 50+ files, remove the comments. Compile, get errors. Or something is broken, diff the files to see what I deleted by accident, etc.

I would not consider removing something that took so long to write in the first place.

[bob]

I am a strong believer in the "occam's razor" principle.

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Wilhem von Ockham, quoting this sentence, rather going back to Aristoteles maybe, as far as I know, didn't support the theory fully himself, as for a theistic view he had too.

I always go for the simplest explanation. We have a few here that try explanations that are so incredibly convoluted they would defy any sort of rational approach to writing software.

[bob]

This is completely false. There is no need to have the sources from Rybka to confirm Ippolit/RobboLite are clones.

Nothing more is needed than a compile of either of the clone engines and Rybka loaded in a debugger/disassembler. (And someone who knows what he's doing)

You are absolutely right!

More correctly, he is "theoretically absolutely right". Practically right requires that someone actually be willing to do this task. "De-compiling" is beyond a PITA. Far from impossible, but not something one might undertake "just because". If someone were to offer me enough money so that I could take a year off, I'd tackle this in a minute. But it would have to be worth my time, as time is limited and we are currently busily making progress with Crafty daily. I'm not so interested in putting that on hold just to prove what happened in any of these copy/clone cases.

[bob]

b) Publish the source for free.
Only if you honestly opt for b) the initial assumption can be true. If the initial assumption is false you will only have to ponder which strong program it was that has been re-engineered.

You didn't quite get my point. I meant what about having the source code of a well known program but wanting to let it look like as if you had come to it by disassembling, not to be asked where else you could have it from?

Again "Occam's razor" comes to mind. If you don't want anyone to know where it came from, why release the source in the first place? That solves the problem entirely. Spending the time necessary to take a decently-writtten program and turn it into the messy source we are talking about seems (to me) to be a total waste of time.

[RaimundHeid]

This is completely false. There is no need to have the sources from Rybka to confirm Ippolit/RobboLite are clones.

Nothing more is needed than a compile of either of the clone engines and Rybka loaded in a debugger/disassembler. (And someone who knows what he's doing)

You are absolutely right!

More correctly, he is "theoretically absolutely right". Practically right requires that someone actually be willing to do this task. "De-compiling" is beyond a PITA. Far from impossible, but not something one might undertake "just because". If someone were to offer me enough money so that I could take a year off, I'd tackle this in a minute. But it would have to be worth my time, as time is limited and we are currently busily making progress with Crafty daily. I'm not so interested in putting that on hold just to prove what happened in any of these copy/clone cases.

I'm not familiar with decompiling, hence this question:

Some folks wrote it would be easy to get C code from a (Rybka) binary with some clever tool (don't remember the name). If that is true then why do you think it will take a year to complete this proof task? The last sceptics should be convinced as soon as the decompiler generates *some* functions that are similar to those found in IPP/ROB (most probably with enumarated variable names) -- [Similar in the sense that they treat input variables and global variables in identical manner and produce the same output]?