Competition for stockfish by stockfish derivative is needed

[Uri Blass]

I do not agree with marco (the leader of stockfish) about a lot of things and one of the problems is that he seems to be too careful not to lose elo and even reject simplifications that are not proved to be bad because of unproved fear that they are 1 elo loss.


I wonder if it is possible to have a different leader with testers who support him to compete against stockfish of marco and accept changes relative to marco's version based on different rules.

1)Simplifications are accepted if they pass twice sprt(-4,0) in first try
and removing one line of if condition is certainly a simplification.

In order to accept other changes they need to pass SPRT(-1.5,4.5) at some time control and SPRT(0,6) at slower time control when the slower time control is not faster than 1 minute per game.

It may be possible also to use lower margin than 6 but the bottom line in the second test needs to be 0.

It does not mean that changes are going to be accepted if they pass and the leader has the freedom not to accept changes(for example if something similar was already tried many times) but tests that pass without being accepted may get a second chance(for example if some patch failed SPRT(0.6) and passed SPRT(0,4) at the same time control then it may be accepted if it pass again SPRT(0.4) without failures with SPRT(0,4))

2)People who commit patches have the freedom to push every patch that they want at every time control that they want and with the number of games that they want or with the SPRT parameters that they want.

3)People who give their machine for testing have the option to decide
which patch to test(they can choose default that is the option that the leader suggest but also can choose to increase or to reduce priority of every candidate to test when priority below -5 means not testing it even if there are no other tests) and I guess that if somebody give obviously bad patches that interest nobody then people including the leader may put them with priority below -5 so no waste of computer time on them.

[syzygy]

Why not simply create your own fork on github (if you don't have one already)?

[zamar]

In open source World, you are free to fork and set up your own shared testing environment...

But trust me, managing a high-quality project (like SF) is much more difficult than what it looks like...

Everybody is always blaming prime minister and government for everything they don't like, but how long would you last in that position?

[Uri Blass]

Why not simply create your own fork on github (if you don't have one already)?

As Joona said things are not easy and I hope another person is going to do the job of being the leader and I only suggested ideas.
I do not complain about specific people who do not want to do it.

I know that I am not the only person who does not like the rules and Joona Kilski also does not like some of the rules

Here are Joona's words from the stockfish group:

"There is no point in using any testing methodology if one doesn't base the decision on the results in systematic way. The test passed, it removes 5 lines of code. So of course it should be committed."

I can add that I dislike blaming people who only give patches for wasting the framework time especially when they put their tests in low priority and somebody(not them) approved their tests.

I prefer to see testing when everybody is free to give patches without being attacked(and having the patches at low priority that nobody test unless testers change their priorities is not attacking the person unlike what happened in the stockfish framework).

[Michel]

Everybody is always blaming prime minister and government for everything they don't like, but how long would you last in that position?

+1

[syzygy]

I can add that I dislike blaming people who only give patches for wasting the framework time especially when they put their tests in low priority and somebody(not them) approved their tests.

I prefer to see testing when everybody is free to give patches without being attacked(and having the patches at low priority that nobody test unless testers change their priorities is not attacking the person unlike what happened in the stockfish framework).

What you have been getting there is called feedback. Instead of learning from feedback, you turn yourself into a victim.

[Uri Blass]

I can add that I dislike blaming people who only give patches for wasting the framework time especially when they put their tests in low priority and somebody(not them) approved their tests.

I prefer to see testing when everybody is free to give patches without being attacked(and having the patches at low priority that nobody test unless testers change their priorities is not attacking the person unlike what happened in the stockfish framework).

What you have been getting there is called feedback. Instead of learning from feedback, you turn yourself into a victim.

No
Here are the words of marco:
"Uri, please concentrate on the silliness of your tests: you have already plenty to dive there.

Please don't comment on other people tests: you should be the last one to do comments."

It is not feedback and it is simply telling me that I am not allowed to give feedback about other tests because I did mistakes in the past.

For the record.
1)I admit that I did mistakes in the past but the same is for many other people and only I get this type of treatement.
2)I do not agree with a big part of the feedback that I got and certainly
not in the way that it was expressed(I will never say to people to stop the madness only because I dislike their tests)

The words were worse than the actions from my point of view and simply telling the author to stop testing X,Y,Z without insulting the author is better.

Note that there are people(not marco) who agree with me about simplifications and I stopped the test immediately after marco said that

"but a simplification should be something sensible. For instance Uri (I know it seems I use Uri as poster-child of what you should not do, I am sorry of this, nothing personal, but it seems Uri has a special talent to take a good-sense rule and stretch it to the limits) simplification patch currently under test is not a real simplification IMHO, he has just removed a condition that could yield to some unclear result and should be tested with regular SPRT mode. He didn't removed the feature nor rewrote it in a simplified way."

I stopped the test not because I agree with him but because I understand that marco is the boss and that he is not going to accept the patch even if it pass SPRT(-3,1) at long time control(and I already used -3,1 for long time control and not (-4,0) because of knowing that marco is afraid too much to lose elo so he may not accept passing SPRT(-4,0) twice)

For people who agree with me then here is vdb response
about the claim that removing an if statement is not a simplification:

"Why not?

These would be actually the most obvious candidates for simplification. Often such preconditions are added simply "to be on the safe side" and their interaction with other parts of the code is unclear. Removing such preconditions simplifies the code conceptually."

[Evert]

As Joona said things are not easy and I hope another person is going to do the job of being the leader and I only suggested ideas.
I do not complain about specific people who do not want to do it.

That's not generally how open-source projects work (successful ones, with more than one developer). If you want something done, you do it. You don't get to ask that someone else does it, because it's not up to you to decide how they spend their time. You have to take charge. You may get lucky and find someone who cares about it as much as you do (or more) and is willing to get started on it, but chances of that are much better if you first show that you're able and willing to do the work yourself.

Ask yourself: why should someone else invest their time for you if you're not willing to do so yourself?

[Uri Blass]

As Joona said things are not easy and I hope another person is going to do the job of being the leader and I only suggested ideas.
I do not complain about specific people who do not want to do it.

That's not generally how open-source projects work (successful ones, with more than one developer). If you want something done, you do it. You don't get to ask that someone else does it, because it's not up to you to decide how they spend their time. You have to take charge. You may get lucky and find someone who cares about it as much as you do (or more) and is willing to get started on it, but chances of that are much better if you first show that you're able and willing to do the work yourself.

Ask yourself: why should someone else invest their time for you if you're not willing to do so yourself?

I do not see it as investing the time only for me because many people prefer to see better stockfish and I believe that stockfish can get a bigger improvement with a different leader.

People can agree or disagree with me and it is possible that somebody who agree with me is going to suggest himself to be the new leader.

[syzygy]

1)I admit that I did mistakes in the past but the same is for many other people and only I get this type of treatement.

I think it would be good to stop arguing "others do it too".

Others do not trigger the same kind of reaction. Maybe because they accept criticism and adjust, instead of eternally seeking for and complaining about perceived logical contradictions?

If you take a step back and try to look at your "maxply" tests with some common sense, are you still convinced those were worth other people's computing time and electricity bills? Really, common sense is the key here.

2)I do not agree with a big part of the feedback that I got and certainly
not in the way that it was expressed(I will never say to people to stop the madness only because I dislike their tests)

When people refuse to understand mild words, there is not much else left than calling things for what they are.