Fat Fritz 2

[unserializable]

d) Calling Stockfish (or Leela) something else **-engine just for marketing & profit reasons, may be legal, but certainly not very honorable or respectable, to consumers and the chess community in large. Most chessplayers are no idiots and feels very strongly when they feel some company or persons try to scam them.

I wonder what all people who complain about "calling it something other" would say if FF2 would have been called "Stockfish 13", "Stockfish Plus", "UberStockfish" or something else alike. Forks of open-source projects tend to get different or very different names for a reason. I doubt Stockfish developers would feel good about such situation. I am not aware of whether SF / Leela have any trademarks registered, but taking name from open-source project would not just be somehow "good thing to do".

Could it be that we would have been spared from this ongoing thread simply if there was 'Powered by Stockfish' logo somewhere on the (virtual) box of FF2?

[Peter Berger]

Could it be that we would have been spared from this ongoing thread simply if there was 'Powered by Stockfish' logo somewhere on the (virtual) box of FF2?

Yes, this is actually a perfect suggestion on how things could have gone in a completely different way, with everyone being a happy camper.

Even A. Silver would be way happier. I have watched this 1 hour interview. He recently started to engage in programming, he is fascinated by this strange new world. And maybe he'll make major contributions to this field at some future point in time?

For now he contributed his net, and he got someone to put it on sale for a reasonable amount of money. This doesn't mean you were FORCED to buy it though ..

Personally I think that there is a market for just selling latest Stockfish with a recent Fritz GUI for 99 Dollars - maybe more so than for Fat Fritz 2 or x ?!

[MikeB]

d) Calling Stockfish (or Leela) something else **-engine just for marketing & profit reasons, may be legal, but certainly not very honorable or respectable, to consumers and the chess community in large. Most chessplayers are no idiots and feels very strongly when they feel some company or persons try to scam them.

I wonder what all people who complain about "calling it something other" would say if FF2 would have been called "Stockfish 13", "Stockfish Plus", "UberStockfish" or something else alike. Forks of open-source projects tend to get different or very different names for a reason. I doubt Stockfish developers would feel good about such situation. I am not aware of whether SF / Leela have any trademarks registered, but taking name from open-source project would not just be somehow "good thing to do".

Could it be that we would have been spared from this ongoing thread simply if there was 'Powered by Stockfish' logo somewhere on the (virtual) box of FF2?

What they could have done is quite simple. Sell the Fritz GUI without the Stockfish clone exe ,but with the net. Put the various clone exe's on Github with source under as Release tab on GitHub. Build a script within the install exe downloaded from their site when the program executes, that pulls in the appropriate exe from their Github release page. As long as they kept the CB exe and the net separate from the SF exe at the point of sale, they would have been fine.

As an example, this a SF release page https://github.com/official-stockfish/S ... /tag/sf_12. They would have their own Github release page separate from SF of course.

The above does not make it any less seemly, but I believe it would make it perfectly legal and that is the way the world is sometimes, many times seemly can also be legal. As an example, it would be seemly to voice your political views at a memorial service - perfectly legal, but not the right way to be.

[Ckappe]

d) Calling Stockfish (or Leela) something else **-engine just for marketing & profit reasons, may be legal, but certainly not very honorable or respectable, to consumers and the chess community in large. Most chessplayers are no idiots and feels very strongly when they feel some company or persons try to scam them.

I wonder what all people who complain about "calling it something other" would say if FF2 would have been called "Stockfish 13", "Stockfish Plus", "UberStockfish" or something else alike. Forks of open-source projects tend to get different or very different names for a reason. I doubt Stockfish developers would feel good about such situation. I am not aware of whether SF / Leela have any trademarks registered, but taking name from open-source project would not just be somehow "good thing to do".

Could it be that we would have been spared from this ongoing thread simply if there was 'Powered by Stockfish' logo somewhere on the (virtual) box of FF2?

Why overcomplicate it, and even go down the "naming" route of the "engine" / "entity" ??.. If they have a network for Stockfish they would like to sell to users... Just be honest about it! Sell the network and provide download links to the builds of stockfish fork + source needed to run it. How difficult would this be?

The only reason, I can think of for naming this fat fritz 2.0 (implying it s a "new version of Fritz" ) and not Stockfish, is to deceive buyers, in my opinion.

[dkappe]

Could it be that we would have been spared from this ongoing thread simply if there was 'Powered by Stockfish' logo somewhere on the (virtual) box of FF2?

Yes, this is actually a perfect suggestion on how things could have gone in a completely different way, with everyone being a happy camper.

Even A. Silver would be way happier. I have watched this 1 hour interview. He recently started to engage in programming, he is fascinated by this strange new world. And maybe he'll make major contributions to this field at some future point in time?

For now he contributed his net, and he got someone to put it on sale for a reasonable amount of money. This doesn't mean you were FORCED to buy it though ..

Personally I think that there is a market for just selling latest Stockfish with a recent Fritz GUI for 99 Dollars - maybe more so than for Fat Fritz 2 or x ?!

I doubt it. To summarize Vondelle, it’s not worth it and it’s legal but immoral. Now Vondelle is a perfectly nice fellow and usually pretty levelheaded. So if he’s getting worked up about this, there must be something deeper going on.

As others have pointed out, there are other individuals/projects who really are violating the GPL — Raubfisch, Eaman, etc. — and not giving credit or making their source available. Do they merit a blog post? Apparently not.

So what’s afoot? Annoyance that someone is making money with the software? Then you shouldn’t have licensed it under the GPL. Annoyance that a commercial entity is putting shiny packaging around it and making typical overblown marketing claims? See the GPL again.

At some point someone is going to come along with a truly different network architecture and a proprietary net. It will be telling how the Stockfish community reacts.

[dkappe]

What they could have done is quite simple. Sell the Fritz GUI without the Stockfish clone exe ,but with the net. Put the various clone exe's on Github with source under as Release tab on GitHub. Build a script within the install exe downloaded from their site when the program executes, that pulls in the appropriate exe from their Github release page. As long as they kept the CB exe and the net separate from the SF exe at the point of sale, they would have been fine.

As an example, this a SF release page https://github.com/official-stockfish/S ... /tag/sf_12. They would have their own Github release page separate from SF of course.

But why jump through all those hoops when the GPLv3 enumerates the right to sell the binary as one of your basic freedoms? Should your android build have to download the binary from github?

[MikeB]

What they could have done is quite simple. Sell the Fritz GUI without the Stockfish clone exe ,but with the net. Put the various clone exe's on Github with source under as Release tab on GitHub. Build a script within the install exe downloaded from their site when the program executes, that pulls in the appropriate exe from their Github release page. As long as they kept the CB exe and the net separate from the SF exe at the point of sale, they would have been fine.

As an example, this a SF release page https://github.com/official-stockfish/S ... /tag/sf_12. They would have their own Github release page separate from SF of course.

But why jump through all those hoops when the GPLv3 enumerates the right to sell the binary as one of your basic freedoms? Should your android build have to download the binary from github?

My suggestion would be very simple for a software company, I could do it myself and I'm not even a programmer. Just call the install exe from a shell script and have the shell script also pull the exe you need from Github, it is simple, no hoops at all.

[Peter Berger]

I doubt it. To summarize Vondelle, it’s not worth it and it’s legal but immoral. Now Vondelle is a perfectly nice fellow and usually pretty levelheaded. So if he’s getting worked up about this, there must be something deeper going on.

You sure? Once every 2 years I buy a new version of the Fritz GUI. I couldn't care less about the engine provided with it ( last time it was some advanced version of Gromit for all I know, I never even loaded it once).

I won't buy Fat Fritz ( as I kind of hate the name and story) - but as it is time, I'll probably buy the next one.

[dkappe]

My suggestion would be very simple for a software company, I could do it myself and I'm not even a programmer. Just call the install exe from a shell script and have the shell script also pull the exe you need from Github, it is simple, no hoops at all.

But I’m permitted to put it on media directly. No need to worry about installing without network connectivity, or Microsoft charging for commercial downloads at some point in the future. Why is GitHub suddenly a magic incantation? Can I use sourceforge or bitbucket or box or Dropbox instead?

[dkappe]

I doubt it. To summarize Vondelle, it’s not worth it and it’s legal but immoral. Now Vondelle is a perfectly nice fellow and usually pretty levelheaded. So if he’s getting worked up about this, there must be something deeper going on.

You sure? Once every 2 years I buy a new version of the Fritz GUI. I couldn't care less about the engine provided with it ( last time it was some advanced version of Gromit for all I know, I never even loaded it once).

I won't buy Fat Fritz ( as I kind of hate the name and story) - but as it is time, I'll probably buy the next one.

Am I sure? About the reasons for Vondelle getting worked up? No, I’m not. It’s a mystery to me.

Unlike you, I haven’t purchased anything other than Komodo since the early 2000’s (there’s a ChessBase DVD kicking around somewhere). Each person will have to decide for themselves whether a particular piece of software is worth it.