Stockfish Polyglot now violates the GPL

[Ovyron]

Stockfish Polyglot was updated on March 20:

https://chess.massimilianogoi.com/download/stockfish/#

Yet its sources can't be found anywhere? The github has code several months old. Why don't they just include the source with the many compiles they provide?

I guess now everybody can do their Stockfish modifications, release their compiles, and keep sources secret, the GPL has become a joke...

[Robert Pope]

Did you ask for the source and were refused? GPL doesn't require source to be published on the web, just provided on request.

[Ovyron]

The only way they have of communication requires giving them my email and I don't even know if they'd sell it or whatever.

It isn't rocket science to share the source (they chose to NOT include it with the compiles and to NOT update their github), so it's clear they preferred to have a closed Stockfish derivative.

[Robert Pope]

The only way they have of communication requires giving them my email and I don't even know if they'd sell it or whatever.

It isn't rocket science to share the source (they chose to NOT include it with the compiles and to NOT update their github), so it's clear they preferred to have a closed Stockfish derivative.

Okay, but that isn't a GPL violation. They've provided a way to contact them and request the source. That you don't trust them enough to provide an address for them to send the code to is your decision. You could always create a throwaway email just for that.

[Ovyron]

That's very inconvenient.

I'm now requesting someone (that doesn't mind sharing their emails to strangers) to request Stockfish Polyglot's source to see if they comply with the GPL or not.

[kramnik]

Calm down! I have several personal problems, so keeping updated my site requires effort. Remember Raubfisch? That clone never had its source; Stocfkish Polyglot is Stockfish! So for the source you can just use the one with the given timestamp and integrate the Zipproth's libraries to read the Polyglot books, nothing else.

I don't always update the source in GitHub because as I've said I have other tasks to do, the main of them is following my subscribers and customers.

And about "selling your email"... you're paranoid, I don't get any advantage to sell addresses to others and I would NOT do it even if in case I had. Discretion is my first word, I'm not a relative of Mark Zuckerberg.

[Ovyron]

Remember Raubfisch? That clone never had its source;

Yeah, but it's common knowledge that Raubfisch has always violated the GPL, what is new is that Stockfish Polyglot joins that group.

Note this isn't an attack on your site or Stockfish Polyglot, this thread just demonstrates how the GPL has become a joke nobody cares about. You don't care about providing Stockfish Polyglot's sources, nobody cares about requesting it to you to see if you'd send it or not. I bet it has been downloaded by people that only wanted the compiles.

Also, I requested the source on this thread, you didn't provide it = GPL violation, which marks a milestone because the Raubfisches of this world can increase and nobody would care that the sources remain private.

I still don't get why aren't sources on the same file that includes the compile? (it has 4 different versions of 32bit but no sources!) in my experience the exes are created on the folder that includes the sources, so it takes more effort to remove the source so it's excluded than to include it with the compiles!

Finally:

It was easier for me to obtain Houdini 6's sources than Stockfish Polyglot's sources. In what kind of world do we live today?

I guess I'll join the people that don't care about GPL violations of others, since it seems I was the last remaining one, and Stockfish developers have done nothing to enforce that modified sources are shared. And I'd rather have private engines like Eman or CfishR around than not, so if this is the only way, so be it.

[kramnik]

To be fair an indian guy asked me the source on Instagram and I gave him. On GitHub there is the Stockfish Polyglot 11 source, so I don't understand all this rumpus. Including the source in the package is not so smart because it would be bigger: more time to download it and more bandwidth spent on my side. I change stockfish polyglot so often that not always I have the will to upload also its source on github. You are raising problems for nothing.

[Modern Times]

I'd call this making a mountain out of a molehill.

[Ovyron]

I'd call this making a mountain out of a molehill.

So the source was requested and never given. What is the GPL good for?