Computer chess scene: a heap of ruins

[JuLieN]

This is what our small community looks like right now. Coding legends looking like foolish fallen angels... friends turning against each others... promising talents leaving the scene for more peaceful fields... and still, in the rubbles, people are fighting bare hands, making each day passing a global pacification farther away...

So I'm asking you: is it worth it? Why are you people destroying a whole community for the sake of only one man who don't even bother? If Vas has been wronged (which he might have or might not have, this is NOT the topic here), he can go to court. Nobody has to fight his private war, a war he himself isn't even involved in. Even more not at the cost of everyone's interest.

Please, people, put yourself together and go back to your senses. Let the man defend himself if he wants to, and put an end to those disorders. You are yet sitting in the middle of the ruins YOU created, don't you think it's time to put an end to this and start to rebuild?

This is a message to everyone in the community, although some people should feel more concerned than other. Like Bob, Ed, Miguel and all the other involved passionate zealots from one side or another.

You guys are turning a funny hobby into a repulsive lunatic asylum.

It's still time. But there is not many more time before the heap of ruins turns into this:

[Steve B]

If Vas has been wronged (which he might have or might not have, this is NOT the topic here), he can go to court. Nobody has to fight his private war, a war he himself isn't even involved in. Even more not at the cost of everyone's interest.

Hi Julien
actually some would say there was someone wronged
Fabien ..and he did do something about it..including going to the FSF
The problem is it took him 5 years to find out what had happened and he finally spoke out ..sadly by then ..Rybka was deeply entrenched

Better Late Then Never Regards
Steve

[JuLieN]

If Vas has been wronged (which he might have or might not have, this is NOT the topic here), he can go to court. Nobody has to fight his private war, a war he himself isn't even involved in. Even more not at the cost of everyone's interest.

Hi Julien
actually some would say there was someone wronged
Fabien ..and he did do something about it..including going to the FSF
The problem is it took him 5 years to find out what had happened and he finally spoke out ..sadly by then ..Rybka was deeply entrenched

Better Late Then Never Regards
Steve

Indeed, Steve. Him plus all the fair commercial engines authors who were deprived of revenues by this unfair competition. But this is not the alleged wrong that is causing our community's collapse. The alleged wrong responsible for this is the alleged one against Vas (and, again, I don't want to discuss if this wrong is true or not, that would be piling on the ruins). So my plea is to stop discussing this very wrong and let the man act by himself if he thinks he's been wronged.

[Anton]

Aren't you being a bit over-dramatic? tantrums have entertainment value and the bad apples are eventually weeded out.

Just another day in computer chess regards.

Anton.

[fern]

Julien:
As the days when the great novelty in this field was the appearance of a new computer capable of playing, say, at 1700 Elo and all was new, as those days, I repeat, are gone, what else you want the people discuss here?
Fighting about nothing is kind of a game that entertain some people and they are right if they do get the kick.
When you open a magazine of, say, 1981, you can grasp the feeling of that age. Everything was new and exciting. A new Fidelity machine! A new Novag playing at 1800! A tournament!
Etc etc.
Now all that is in ruins because it went, is part of the past.
No excitement now. Every bloody engine plays better than all of us.
So we have only one thing: to take the knife and slaughter each others

with a Browning 9mm in my hands regards
Fern

[gerold]

Aren't you being a bit over-dramatic? tantrums have entertainment value and the bad apples are eventually weeded out.

Just another day in computer chess regards.

Anton.

+++ 1

[JuLieN]

Aren't you being a bit over-dramatic? tantrums have entertainment value and the bad apples are eventually weeded out.

Just another day in computer chess regards.

Anton.

+++ 1

In case you guys didn't notice, Ed just got completely nuts with this story. Maybe that looks sensational and entertaining to you, but for me, as an engine author, this is a big disappointment. And this is just one of the many disastrous aftermaths of this nightmare.

[fern]

Can you explain about Ed going nuts?
Is he in a clinic or something?
Just disarranged but in home?
Only bored and bothered?

Worried regards
Fern

[mhull]

In case you guys didn't notice, Ed just got completely nuts with this story. Maybe that looks sensational and entertaining to you, but for me, as an engine author, this is a big disappointment. And this is just one of the many disastrous aftermaths of this nightmare.

Ed decremented to rowing with one oar long before the rybka issue, somewhere around 2007.

[JuLieN]

Can you explain about Ed going nuts?
Is he in a clinic or something?
Just disarranged but in home?
Only bored and bothered?

Worried regards
Fern

I fear that if I were to answer this question (which would require to go quote some other threads and discuss evidences) I would just become a part of the war I'm precisely criticizing, Fern. So just take it as a (groundless?) emotional burst I won't try to defend. Still I have sympathy and admiration for Ed (I here and then go read his technical documentation on his website), so I'm sad to see a smart man taking part into a street fight. Him and others on both sides.

So, instead, you might just want to see it as I do: don't chose a side and observe how absurd it is to see friends and colleagues becoming enemies and turning a nice place into hell.



(This is a gentle depiction of it.)