Computer chess scene: a heap of ruins

[fern]

Eh bien, mon ami, je fais ca depuis beaucoup du Temp. Je ne crois pas que cette chose, ordinateurs d’échec, est important pour ça. Je observe, je ris..

au bientôt

Fern

[Anton]

In case you guys didn't notice, Ed just got completely nuts

Sorry to hear that, I am not entertained by this news, hope he makes a full recovery.

concerned regards.

[gerold]

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.)

This sort of thing happened before a couple years ago here in CCC.
I forgot who was the Mods then but they got kicked out of here and another signed up under a name other than his own. Anything to discredit CCC and some members here. Using the report about Vas to do it. Just a discredit to the trouble makers IMO. Most here know who is behind it.

[K I Hyams]

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.

He was certainly doing so at the time that Whittington was removed from his post as a moderator on CTF. In fact, his MO remains largely unchanged.

[Zach Wegner]

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:

I agree, the computer chess community has gone off the deep end. I still try to derive enjoyment out of computer chess, but that's really only possible for me by ignoring everything that is going on. There's all the stupid fighting, but the programmer community is also much more fragmented now, and there is very little interesting technical discussion these days IMO.

I don't know if there's much to do, besides ignore it...

[Michel]

On the bright side: chess engines are stronger than ever before...

[bhlangonijr]

...
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.

Read again Julien's "manifesto" listening to this soundtrack in the background: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4LyoUGxVd8. It fits perfectly...
I could even imagine Bob, at the end of all investigations and the scene of the CCC falling apart, together with ZW, MW and saying: "Gentleman, its been an honor to code with you tonight"...

Putting aside the jokes, I think that "every cloud has a silver lining". We will learn with this bad experience and it will help us establishing a more fair environment for all commercial and amateur programmers.

Regards,

[mclane]

there was always fight in computerchess scene.

the dedicated chess companies fought each other. the distributors /salesmen with their shops. there were always several court cases.


IMO today its more relaxed than it was in the best days of computerchess.

[geots]

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:

Yea, it's a heap of ruins. But to say Ed or Miguel played even a minor part- you are now about to give us a definition of insanity. Ed signs a letter, then upon further thought, backs out. And he felt really bad that he had been a part of something he considered a mistake. When questioned, he defended his decisions. Would you rather he had not?

Either way- you cannot connect the dots between Vas remaining silent- and others defending him. His silence tells you nothing- except it is convenient for his detractors to read into it what fits for them.

Look, you can include yourself right there with bearing the blame. You are a part of the CC community. The community in general has the talent to write successful chess programs, and from where I am sitting- that is no easy feat. But they did not as individuals or a community even have the forsight to understand the ramifications of putting an open source code out there for all to see. Ok, most likely, I might think, if people had sat down and said when we do this- we have to establish some very extremely well-defined parameters. As to what is ok and what is not for programmers to use or take.

No doubt some will say it IS CLEAR. But these are INDIVIDUAL opinions- and believe me, they vary. When Dann Corbit tells me the gray areas are so prominent he would not know how to even start looking at the case- it was a piss-poor job of fumbling around for some kind of consensus that floats around vaguely in minds.

Chris Conkie made the statement to someone concerning the Rybka issue, and I will quote it as best I can without looking back. But it is close.
"What George wants is a clear cut answer, and there is no clear cut answer. It is more complicated than that." And it would not be if people had done their job BEFORE THE FACT.

Reason for people running in circles screaming and shouting- and your post here- is because this was a case like none other- ever. The list is too long of all the clones found out by Conkie, Pete and others to even begin a list. But the authors to my knowledge hardly ever wasted the time to defend it. They knew. And they were caught almost before they were thru. Never in history around here has a program played 4 to 5 years, and then all hell broke loose. And say what they might, there were no rules in place for a case that could be termed a close call by many.

If you say there is no way to really define clearly right vs. wrong in studying and taking from open source, then you would be insane to put it out there. I know all about giving back to the community, and that's a noble idea. But it's not worth this disaster.

You, and when I say "you", I don't mean just you. All of 'em. But don't throw out some vague ideas- with no guards with teeth in them- and them bemoan the fact everything is in a mess. You had to know it was coming- sooner or later.

Pull back all open source until if and when you have the correct and well defined parameters in place. THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT. There will always be "some" disputes. But Jesus, you got a trainwreck for regulations- and you lay the blame on people, after the fact, who don't agree with decisions that should never have been this big an issue.

Did Vas take more than he should? Who the hell knows for sure? You're a pretty smart guy, and you don't know where the line is for sure. Surely you can take more less valuable things in a larger amount than you can the critical stuff. Evidence can stack 5 ft. high- I'm seeing it interpreted differently by some smart guys.

When Uri is uncomfortabe with it, Miguel being uncomfortable speaking volumes, Sven and Ed are uncomfortable, and there are more- then I'm sorry, but I'm not comfortable either.

And the Einstein's who came up with that idiotic sentence just made a bad situation worse.

I have been just trying to help you here. After the words we had earlier, I did a little research and found out you are a smart guy with principles. Doesn't mean you are always right- but you don't try to prove a case with semantics, deceit and misdirection.

Look, make no mistake. I am about at the point where I just don't care any more. This is killing the community. I know how to solve it to everyone's satisfaction- and I DO MEAN EVERYONE. I don't have to be that smart to see it- it's not rocket science.

But I am sorry. If you think the answer to this mess is for people like Uri, Ed, Miguel, Whitty and Sven to just shut up and go away, you are in a dream world.

No problem was ever solved by ignoring it.



gts

[Eelco de Groot]

there was always fight in computerchess scene.

the dedicated chess companies fought each other. the distributors /salesmen with their shops. there were always several court cases.


IMO today its more relaxed than it was in the best days of computerchess.

"relaxed"?



Thorsten's vision of computerchess today, with the ruins of the ICGA's banquet halls in the background

Eelco