Rybka ban thoughts

[mwyoung]

I find it strange that your post doesn't contain the word "code" even once.

I do want to make it clear that I do not absolve Vas completely.

However, I think what has been done to him is disgraceful.

I respect most of your opinions, but not this one. This is clearly over the top.

Vas knew what he was doing, he stole code (copy and paste) to increase Rybka elo on the backs of other programs.

This made Vas famous in the computer chess world, and also made him a lot of money.

Now after all these years justice is finally served!!

[fern]

Right on target, dann, as almost usual...
Fern

[Dann Corbit]

I find it strange that your post doesn't contain the word "code" even once.

I do want to make it clear that I do not absolve Vas completely.

However, I think what has been done to him is disgraceful.

What is disgraceful is the fact that you totally skip over the copy-and-paste of CODE. Rajlich has not re-written algorithms, he has copied and pasted code, which can be shown by the presence of dead code that cannot be explained otherwise.

At some point I could have interpreted your comments as a lack of competence. After all you are the one who declared after looking at the code that there were no simiarities between Strelka and Fruit or Rybka, and that Strelka looked really new and original.

Did I really say that there were no similarities?

Perhaps I sent the code to other experts to have them examine it.

Perhaps those experts were in a better position than me to know.

Perhaps those experts pointed out a routine with a funny name {that was clearly borrowed from Fruit} and some similar data structures, but that it was different enough to be considered original.

I mentioned the dead code in another post.
I do not think that Vas is free from blame.

Now you are suggesting that it's not Rajlich. It's the compiler. The compiler took source code written differently and produced the same object code. That's a line of defense that is still not going to explain the presence of dead code taken verbatim from Fruit or Crafty sources.

I am saying we do not have the source code. The claim that Rybka is a direct copy is made from reverse engineering and supposing what the original source looked like. The steps of an algorithm are not protected by copyright law, only the implementation. The report found 64% similarity.

Dann maybe you should take a little break from this. Your credibility has been in the red zone for a long time now, and you are making it look even worse.

Perhaps I have no credibility on this matter. I don't really care.
I am not saying that Vas is innocent. Only that every single programmer here is guilty of the same crimes as Vas, to one degree or another.

// Christophe

[Christopher Conkie]

I find it strange that your post doesn't contain the word "code" even once.

I do want to make it clear that I do not absolve Vas completely.

However, I think what has been done to him is disgraceful.

I respect most of your opinions, but not this one. This is clearly over the top.

Vas knew what he was doing, he stole code (copy and paste) to increase Rybka elo on the backs of other programs.

This made Vas famous in the computer chess world, and also made him a lot of money.

Now after all these years justice is finally served!!

I think you cannot discount the work of Larry Kaufman and his article......

http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Art ... alance.htm

It is very difficult to generalise. Everyone's adventure is original.

[Dann Corbit]

I find it strange that your post doesn't contain the word "code" even once.

I do want to make it clear that I do not absolve Vas completely.

However, I think what has been done to him is disgraceful.

I respect most of your opinions, but not this one. This is clearly over the top.

Vas knew what he was doing, he stole code (copy and paste) to increase Rybka elo on the backs of other programs.

This made Vas famous in the computer chess world, and also made him a lot of money.

Now after all these years justice is finally served!!

I think you cannot discount the work of Larry Kaufman and his article......

http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Art ... alance.htm

It is very difficult to generalise. Everyone's adventure is original.

The big innovation of Vas was aggressive and careful testing of every parameter with thousands of games.

Of course, everyone does that now.

[Christopher Conkie]

I find it strange that your post doesn't contain the word "code" even once.

I do want to make it clear that I do not absolve Vas completely.

However, I think what has been done to him is disgraceful.

I respect most of your opinions, but not this one. This is clearly over the top.

Vas knew what he was doing, he stole code (copy and paste) to increase Rybka elo on the backs of other programs.

This made Vas famous in the computer chess world, and also made him a lot of money.

Now after all these years justice is finally served!!

I think you cannot discount the work of Larry Kaufman and his article......

http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Art ... alance.htm

It is very difficult to generalise. Everyone's adventure is original.

The big innovation of Vas was aggressive and careful testing of every parameter with thousands of games.

Of course, everyone does that now.

Yep Dann. Most at the top now tune in that way as well. Steffen does it, Vincent does it.....etc etc.

I think having someone like Larry doing that testing might help somewhat too.

Of course using Fruit as a base is a big head start. But using Fruit only gets another Fruit unless you can add something significant to it. Because of the decision of the ICGA is just another Toga. In the same way that Houdini is just another Robbolito. They all have their merits but are in terms of competition fundamentally flawed.

Chris

[bob]

It appears to me that Vas has made some disappointing choices.

However, I suspect that every single person who has ever made a chess program has carefully examined someone else's source and read someone else's article and implemented their own version of it.

Maybe Vas's use was more extensive, but he has been given the death sentence for the same thing that every other chess programmer does.

That is simply, and utterly false. Every other programmer does NOT copy the source from someone else. This has never been about copying ideas, it has been about copying source code.

Simply put, it is necessary to use modern techniques like LMR, Null move, PVS search, etc. I guess further that not a single programmer here has invented all of his evaluation terms, but at least got ideas from other programmers, GMs, etc.

Key word: "ideas". Ideas != source code

An algorithm is not protected by copyright. If you read and understand an algorithm, you can make your own implementation of it. There is nothing wrong with that. I guess that nobody here really understands what that means, considering how people react. Do people really not understand what the definition of an algorithm is?

I also do not think that plagiarism has any bearing on the subject. Vas was not producing a published report, and he also did give credit to both Crafty and Fruit, stating that he had carefully studied them.

Not good enough. If you copy from another article, book, or etc, there is a precise citation rule that must be followed. Vas _explicitly_ stated that he copied _no_ code. And that statement was proven to be completely false.

It does seem to me that he did take excessive liberties, but still I think it is strange to talk about plagiarism for a chess engine binary. Plagiarism is an academic crime.

Simply read the ICGA tournament rules. The author must explicitly list the names of anyone that has source code in the program being entered. This was not done.

I really do not know for sure how much wrongdoing Vas has done, but I think to a large degree he was made a whipping boy for the same sins that all chess programmer commit.

You have made many statements in the past. The above goes to the _BOTTOM_ of the pile in terms of quality. "all chess programmers" do not copy the code of others. That statement is trivial to prove false. I am a chess programmer. I have not copied _any_ code from any other program. This is easy to verify. And it instantly disproves this "all chess programmers copy" nonsense...

Where is this coming from?

Vas created his own set of problems, by himself. The penalty could have been much lighter but he offered no justification for his actions, no circumstances that could be used to reduce the penalties, no nothing...

Shredder was not reverse engineered. Hiarcs was not reverse engineered, Junior was not reverse engineered. Because of Vas' ultimate success he was singled out. Was it petty jealousy?

You already know the answer to this. Vas started this process by claiming that Strelka was a reverse-engineered clone of Rybka. Since Strelka source was released, it was natural that someone would notice that it was quite similar to fruit. This wasn't a witch-hunt at all. It wasn't petty jealousy. It was stupidity.

My whole take on this can (of course) be completely wrong. But I feel deep disappointment on all sides of the argument.

IMO-YMMV

[bob]

I find it strange that your post doesn't contain the word "code" even once.

All of the code used to commit Vas is from reverse engineering.

Have you seen the post I made some time ago that showed two completely different code bases in C produced identical assembly (even the control structures were different).

Vas has been convicted of stealing code in a court made up of his opponents. There is literally no Rybka code available.

From assembly, the only thing that can be demonstrated is the algorithm similarity. I recall that 64% similarity was a quoted figure somewhere.

Your example was no good. Why? Because if you want to construct such an example, it is not that hard to do. But the question is, does it happen _naturally_? The answer is no. There is a ton of academic research on plagiarism detection that discusses this issue to death...

64% makes no sense to me. The parts that I examined were 100% matches. Not close. Not approximate. Identical.

[bob]

I find it strange that your post doesn't contain the word "code" even once.

I do want to make it clear that I do not absolve Vas completely.

However, I think what has been done to him is disgraceful.

A murder is sentenced to death. Disgraceful? Someone swindles thousands of people of their retirements. They are sentenced to years of prison. Disgraceful?

The only things I see that merit "disgraceful" are (1) Vas copying code and then denying it over and over, even in the presence of absolute proof; (2) your (and others) acting like he is a scapegoat of some sort. He created this mess all by himself. He has no one else to blame but himself...

[rbarreira]

Only that every single programmer here is guilty of the same crimes as Vas, to one degree or another.

Every single programmer here has directly copied non-public-domain code without attributing it to the original author, released this code as part of their own software and/or later denied doing it when directly asked about it?

Those are some big accusations especially when talking about "every programmer here".