FIDE Ethics Commission ruling on ICGA/Rybka complaint

[bob]

My only comment was that the GPL doesn't prevent anything regarding the use of the code, and only affects the distribution.

The issue you raise would not be GPL, rather it would be ICGA.

Indeed, and I think I've been quite clear about that myself.

Crowd-sourced software development is something fairly new. But when you have such, you generally have one (or two or three) people at the top of the food chain. Linus for example in regard to Linux. For me, the three usual people are the authors, and they should have the final say in whether their code is entered in the ICGA event or not, and the ICGA should listen to the three of them rather than get into the GPL debate or anything else.

I fully agree that, given the usual setup of ICGA tournaments, this is by far the most reasonable position the ICGA could take regarding participation of Stockfish. Marco, Joona and Tord are universally accepted as "the authors" of Stockfish.

For a crowd-sourced program do you need ALL contributors to agree? I think that is too stringent a requirement. One that might not be possible, period. So "the primary author (or authors)" ought to be the one(s) that control this.

Agreed.

And I think the ICGA would go in that direction if there were a conflict.

There seem to be indications that the ICGA was willing to accept an non-SF developer (and for sure a non-primary developer) to participate using SF.

Personally I am entirely in agreement with you that it would go against the spirit of ICGA tournaments to allow this. On the other hand, the ICGA does have the right to allow it (provided the other participants do not object), but only if it is made clear that the participation of SF is not authorised by the 3 primary developers.

The stickier issue is the derivative problem, i.e. Fruit and Toga, or Crafty and Bionic or whatever, as examples. You really don't want two of the same program, even if one has been modified. Or do you?

I have never competed in iCGA tournaments so I do not consider that I am entitled to want anything, but I feel a lot of sympathy for not allowing two nearly identical engines to enter. But clearly there is no engine nearly identical to SF that would have a better right of entering than SF. (However I am not trying to apply Rule 2 here. For example Glaurung is not "nearly identical" to SF in my book, so I would have no objection to it entering. Whether Tord would be allowed to participate twice is a different issue on which I have no strong opinion.)

Actually there are several stockfish derivatives. I couldn't begin to name all of them but they are scattered around all over. Absolutely nothing wrong with people taking open source and fiddling with it. But should they be able to enter it in an ICGA event? My take has ALWAYS been that "if the primary authors agree" then I have no problem with it. Again with the specific caveat that only ONE such derivative work can enter a single event.

I suppose some might enjoy a "calling all clones" event as well, where you make whatever changes you think are better, and then you get to compare your clone to that of someone else. And there is a certain merit to such events. But I don't think anyone with a truly original chess engine would have the propensity to enter such an event, where every other entrant is known to be significantly stronger than theirs.

[Roger Brown]

Thanks for asking.

When I released the TB code, my "SF addition" was intended only to show other engine programmers how to integrate the TB access code into their engine. I figured that most engine developers would be at least somewhat familiar with the Stockfish code, so using SF as example seemed to make sense. It was clear from the start that Marco would never accept it (and I never offered it), so I did not consider it a contribution to SF.

So no, I don't consider that I have significantly added to SF. (And certainly in Elo terms it is insignificant.)

Btw, even if I had developed the TB code specifically for SF, my contribution would not give me a title to calling myself a "primary developer". The number of code lines might be significant, but it hardly touches the real engine which is what makes Stockfish Stockfish.

Hello Ronald,

I appreciate the "primary developer" comment. I really was not going there at all, hence my lack of mischief qualifier, prior to the question I asked. I was not trying to set you up at all!



Thank you for your reply.

Later.

[bob]

I fully agree that, given the usual setup of ICGA tournaments, this is by far the most reasonable position the ICGA could take regarding participation of Stockfish. Marco, Joona and Tord are universally accepted as "the authors" of Stockfish.

Hello Ronald,

I would accept that these three would have the "right" (let us take a wider interpretation than the strict, legal or procedural definition of that word) as authors of Stockfish to enter - or refuse to enter - rather than some other person or group.

Given the above, I hope you can appreciate that this question is not intended to be mischevious at all. Do you not consider your own additions to Stockfish as significant? Should the answer be no, why not? Just curious.

Later.

Roger...

We think alike on this. but there is a simple quotation that is recited at every AA/NA/etc (addiction issues). It goes like this:

"God, grant me the SERENITY to accept the things I can not change, the COURAGE to change the things I can, and the WISDOM to know the difference.

We are unlikely to see SF in an ICGA event. We are unable to change that. I've accepted it. Nothing wrong with asking every now and then, but until the primary authors change their mind, it doesn't appear it will happen. As I have said repeatedly, there is no way to force someone to compete, nor should there be a way, since most believe in freedom in some way or another.

Remember, SF will not always be the strongest program around. It too will pass. As all programs do. And something will replace it, and we have to hope they hold a different view when that happens. But if not, we continue to wait. Too many DO like competition.

[hgm]

I am not afraid of anything bad could happen. It already did.

Not to Stockfish. Not to a program of which the source was available.

This is exactly what paranoia is: irrational crippling fear by a person that does not understand the world around him. You get a $100 fine for walking a red traffic light, and now you don't dare to go outdoors anymore because when you do the police might jump on you, and they even carry guns, so they could shoot you... And what you propose even goes further: that a person suffering from such delusions should have the right to lock in his neighbors, preventing those to go into the street where they might get shot by traffic officers. (OK, for Americans, imagine that we are taking about caucasians here...)

In this scenario, why would anybody enter a program just to test what happens?

That is not really relevant. We were discussing the case where someone would. (Perhaps because he does not suffer from paranoia, but on the contary does understand the world very well, and perfectly knows what is safe and what is criminal?)

[Rebel]

The criteria to be used is "Claims that are proven to the satisfaction of the ICGA"

So you are afraid that it can be proven to the satisfaction of the ICGA that there is stolen code if in fact there is none, and the source code is openly available to anyone? You do realize that this sounds like a rather extreme case of paranoia?

You are using strong words for someone who (while qualified to judge) never cared to look at the technical evidence of the RF case and the scaring precedent the ICGA has set. Authors (who followed the RF case) really need to think twice before subscribing. In a nutshell -

• Donx..xxxxx - Too much Fruit in Rybka (look it up in EO)
  
  Ed xxxx.xxxx- Perhaps this split and divided community can settle on: He took too much.
  Mark Lefler - Ed, I think that is the best summary of this whole thing. Vasik took too much in the eyes of the panel. (Rybka forum)

So, if you take too many ideas of open sources you are a candidate to receive the wrath of the ICGA. That's the precedent that was set in 2011. And what the heck does too many or too much mean?

And now for the irony -

• Both Don and the SF authors openly admitted they took many things from Ippolit (the banned Rybka for taking too much).
  
  From the Doch 09.980 (Don's amazing return to CC) README file we read: Also, much credit goes to the authors of open source chess programs. Many of the ideas and techniques for doch have been borrowed from these wonderful works of art.

Following the precdent set in 2011 any participant can file a complaint to the TD for source code inspection and compare if the source code is in sync with rule #2 and the contributed program details on the registration form.

And of course if someone other than the SF authors would subscribe he likely has no clue what to write in the program details as he is unaware what the SF authors took from other sources.

[hgm]

Crowd-sourced software development is something fairly new. But when you have such, you generally have one (or two or three) people at the top of the food chain. Linus for example in regard to Linux. For me, the three usual people are the authors, and they should have the final say in whether their code is entered in the ICGA event or not, and the ICGA should listen to the three of them rather than get into the GPL debate or anything else.

I fully agree that, given the usual setup of ICGA tournaments, this is by far the most reasonable position the ICGA could take regarding participation of Stockfish. Marco, Joona and Tord are universally accepted as "the authors" of Stockfish.

On the other hand, it might be more productive for ICGA to only accept these "traditional" authors priority in case they want to enter, but not give them the right to veto participation of a lesser or newer author.

In another post it was already remarked that Stockfish has evolved so much that it can no longer be considered a derivative of Glaurung, and that consequently there would be no objection to have both Glaurung and Stockfish participate. And Tord does not seem to have been actively involved in the development of Stockfish for a long time. So would it really be "reasonable" to grant Tord the right to veto participation of Stockfish forever just because somewhere in a remote past he contributed a majority of the code that has now all been replaced? To me this would seem highly unfair to people who's code actually is in there, and who would like to participate. Even if none of them would have a contribution as large as a "principal" author, together the contributors that would like to see participation might have a majority.

Another (so far hypothetical) case is this: suppose someone "pulls a Vas" on Stockfish. He starts his own Stockfish fork, swicthes to a new board representation, forcing a complete overhaul of the evaluation code. In the end he changed perhaps 40% of the code lines. He calls this fork Sockfish (or Suckfish, or Sickfish), complying with the GPL, and never hiding the fact that it is a Stockfish derivative, that largely, or even exactly plays identical (but faster).

Should this person now be recognized as "primary author" of Suckfish? If the "traditional" Stockfish authors (who now each contributed less to Suckfish that the person that created the fork) are bent on not having Stockfish participate, should they be able to veto participation of Suckfish? Which percentage of the code must have been replaced to recognize the actual developer as the sole person to decide on participation? 50%? 99%, 100%?

Even if you would disagree with the claim that setting a percentage is completely arbitrary, I think it would be a very bad idea to burden ICGA with actually determining how large that percentage actually is, in case there arise disputes over whether it was 49 or 51 when the threshold was specified as 50. You don't want rules that invite such quibbles. It would be much more practical to adopt a policy where the right to enter a confessed derivative follows automatically from the original refusing to participate. For them, there might be 10 willing others... The rules can be such that it is upto the ICGA to decide whether a derivative is sufficiently modified to recognize the person wanting to enter it as its principal developer, and obviously just editing the name string should not qualify someone.

Of course if multiple derivatives exist, you would not want to allow entry of all of them. But this doesn't have to be a fatal problem at all. If the persons wanting to enter those cannot agree amongst themselves which of them should enter, you can have them play a qualifier round to select one for the main tourney.

[hgm]

You are using strong words for someone who (while qualified to judge) never cared to look at the technical evidence of the RF case and the scaring precedent the ICGA has set.

Technical evidence IMO is not really important. SO why would I waste time looking at it? And the suggestion that the only purpose of ICGA is to humiliate and smear any participant to the WCCC, and that you just have to let someone else enter a program to which you happened to have contributed some code to get your reputation and life automatically detroyed is such an absurd distortion of facts that "paranoia" is actually an extemely weak characterization. To be more accurate, I should have said that it "bordered on paranoia". Or better yet, on which side...

[Rebel]

You are using strong words for someone who (while qualified to judge) never cared to look at the technical evidence of the RF case and the scaring precedent the ICGA has set.

Technical evidence IMO is not really important.

Then what the heck is important to enforce rule #2?

And the suggestion that the only purpose of ICGA is to humiliate and smear any participant to the WCCC,

WHAT?

I never said that.

I said authors with the precedent set in 2011 should be careful to enter.

And I made a resonable case for it.

The stuff you snipped.

[hgm]

Then what the heck is important to enforce rule #2?

How about certified source code?

WHAT?

I never said that.

But the person to which the paranoia diagnosis was directed seemed to suggest it. The world doesn't revolve just around you!

But more important than what you not said, is of course: do you agree with the statement that was actually written?

[Rebel]

Then what the heck is important to enforce rule #2?

How about certified source code?

1. Still open for interpretation, thus technical.

2. The idea handing over source code would scare programmers even more.

3. I think the CSVN has found the best solution.

WHAT?

I never said that.

But the person to which the paranoia diagnosis was directed seemed to suggest it. The world doesn't revolve just around you!

But more important than what you not said, is of course: do you agree with the statement that was actually written?

No idea to which post you are refering.