An Old Engine

[AdminX]

IMO the prurpose of rule #5 is to protect our host from litigation, and make all members aware that it will not be allowed to post things here that could expose our host to lawsuits. And the postings in this thread in my judgement offer zero chance that we could be held liable for anything.

Our host sells Houdini Aquarium.

Graham,

Robert put in special security code for Chessbase, Aquarium and the ChessKing GUIs. I can confirm that the Houditit executable I created does not work in Chessbase. Can you check to see if it works in Aquarium? I suspect it does not. If true , this a win for Chessbase and Aquarium as they will still be able to sell their versions of Houdini that is the only one that works with their GUI, and now, if any customer requests the code the now legally licensed, they can simply refer to one of the software repository, just as Chessbase does today with respect to Fat Fritz. I can also add that there one file is missing from all the sources, it is 'licentie.cpp'. I believe that this is not by accident. Has the thought ever entered your mind that this was a "deliberate' leak by Robert. Perhaps he realized the error of his ways ,and yet at the same time, he wished to keep his revenue stream intact with both Chessbase and Aquarium. That would be very smart of him.

So perhaps you should not be so quick to rush to judgement when none of us understand how this so called "software leak' really happened. If you look at the high tech security software that Robert intertwined with is Houdini program , I find it highly unlikely that his server would have been so easily cracked based on a guess of a simple logon and password. ( Just look at how security conscious he is - it's all there in the source!) Being trained as an auditor, I can tell you that there as aspects of this incident which simply do not add up. I believe we do not know the whole truth behind this - and if we do not the whole truth, then no can make the statements you making. You need to look of the series of events with a more critical eye before passing judgment on others. Sometimes what may be appear as obvious, is not so obvious at all.

Be safe and take care,
Michael

1st off Mike Thank you for Houdidit, Like yourself I also purchased Houdini from Robert Houdart's website. Now you are correct that Houdidit does not install on Chessbase Products, however there is a simple workaround to get it working on their product line. I know this because I was able to get it install with not very much effort.



One of the reasons I am grateful for your effort is because I have found from time to time that my working license would show something like "not a valid license" which would decrease performance of the engine and I would have to reinstall the product to correct the issue. Once I even had to contact Robert Houdart because I had reached my install limit when I had my old laptop die.

PS: I believe my license issues may of had something to do with the fact that I upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1.

[hgm]

Our host sells Houdini Aquarium.

It is their own choice whether they want to sell pirated software, and want to risk being sued for doing so. That is not our business. It is the moderator's job to make sure nothing happens here in the forum for which they / we could be sued. Rule #5 of the charter grants the moderators the required mandate to do what is needed in this respect.

Also note that member registration and vetting of user names is not a task assigned to the moderators.

[MikeB]

IMO the prurpose of rule #5 is to protect our host from litigation, and make all members aware that it will not be allowed to post things here that could expose our host to lawsuits. And the postings in this thread in my judgement offer zero chance that we could be held liable for anything.

Our host sells Houdini Aquarium.

Graham,

Robert put in special security code for Chessbase, Aquarium and the ChessKing GUIs. I can confirm that the Houditit executable I created does not work in Chessbase. Can you check to see if it works in Aquarium? I suspect it does not. If true , this a win for Chessbase and Aquarium as they will still be able to sell their versions of Houdini that is the only one that works with their GUI, and now, if any customer requests the code the now legally licensed, they can simply refer to one of the software repository, just as Chessbase does today with respect to Fat Fritz. I can also add that there one file is missing from all the sources, it is 'licentie.cpp'. I believe that this is not by accident. Has the thought ever entered your mind that this was a "deliberate' leak by Robert. Perhaps he realized the error of his ways ,and yet at the same time, he wished to keep his revenue stream intact with both Chessbase and Aquarium. That would be very smart of him.

So perhaps you should not be so quick to rush to judgement when none of us understand how this so called "software leak' really happened. If you look at the high tech security software that Robert intertwined with is Houdini program , I find it highly unlikely that his server would have been so easily cracked based on a guess of a simple logon and password. ( Just look at how security conscious he is - it's all there in the source!) Being trained as an auditor, I can tell you that there as aspects of this incident which simply do not add up. I believe we do not know the whole truth behind this - and if we do not the whole truth, then no can make the statements you making. You need to look of the series of events with a more critical eye before passing judgment on others. Sometimes what may be appear as obvious, is not so obvious at all.

Be safe and take care,
Michael

1st off Mike Thank you for Houdidit, Like yourself I also purchased Houdini from Robert Houdart's website. Now you are correct that Houdidit does not install on Chessbase Products, however there is a simple workaround to get it working on their product line. I know this because I was able to get it install with not very much effort.



One of the reasons I am grateful for your effort is because I have found from time to time that my working license would show something like "not a valid license" which would decrease performance of the engine and I would have to reinstall the product to correct the issue. Once I even had to contact Robert Houdart because I had reached my install limit when I had my old laptop die.

PS: I believe my license issues may of had something to do with the fact that I upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1.

I have contacted Robert 3 or 4 times ( or more maybe) for the very same issue when using Houdini under Wine on macoS. ( It is very easy to lose installs under Wine) Robert was always very gracious when dealing with him. But as we all know , we would have eventually lost that ability for that service fix, if we were to live long enough .

Also, I stand corrected , there is fix that I was unaware of.

[Graham Banks]

Robert put in special security code for Chessbase, Aquarium and the ChessKing GUIs. I can confirm that the Houditit executable I created does not work in Chessbase. Can you check to see if it works in Aquarium?...

Hi Mike,

I don't have Aquarium, but perhaps somebody who does could do this for you.

Regards,
Graham.

[mclane]

I have also bought several Houdini versions. I felt somehow betrayed now.

[Terje]

I have also bought several Houdini versions. I felt somehow betrayed now.

By Houdart, I hope?

[mclane]

Yes, I did not know that Houdini is a modified stockfish,


That’s the sad thing about computerchess today that almost all engines are more or less stockfish,

That’s the reason I am not using my pcs anymore.

Neither desktop nor tower or laptop.

I am only using my iPad and my mobile phones and my dedicated chess computers.
I completely stopped doing computerchess on pc Hardware due to the fact that the engines are stockfish clones.
I am not interested in modified stockfish clones, and daily i read in this forum engine x or y gets updated from version x to version y or z.
And ?
Who really cares in times where stockfish is open source and anybody can be a robert houdart or vasik rajlich.

Anybody can use stockfish code or the more clever use stockfish ideas,


And I am, as a customer or user, I am not interested I yet another stockfish cloned engine,

I am interested in an engine that is DIFFERENT,
Made by people who are DIFFERENT. Not by people who came from nirvana and suddenly have an engine of 2700-3400 ELO.

I am not interested to be betrayed that obvious.

Look the programmers I met worked very hard and long to reach the level they had,


John Stanback, christophe theron, Mark uniacke , Chris whittington, Ed Schröder, ...Mark lefler, ....


A very long way,



I met John Stanback in very early days when his engine was NOT that high like WASP is now.
I met christophe theron when his engine was NOT that high participating in paris.
Chris whittington, I tried to Contact him when I had an Atari ST and his Program did 1-3 searches maximum ,
But I was highly interested because I saw that it is playing intelligent.
Or mark Uniacke, I met him when his engine had no mouse input at all. And a few years later he won a championship title.
All those guys made their way in days where open source were not 2800 elo strong,

I met mark Lefler at the championship in Munich. His engine “now” was cool.
And mark knew many tricks and was an amateur magician,



All these things were interesting, the engines different,
But today,
The engines are boring IMO.
Copy paste stockfish routines with elo ratings above 2700.

Not interesting anymore, not for me,

[hgm]

Strange then that the Chess2U and Outskirts computer chess forums have taken the opposite view and disallowed posting of this.

Talkchess is supposed to be the leader in English speaking computer chess forums and leading by example.

Well, let's hope they quickly follow our example, then.

Put your own thoughts on Houdini aside and enforce the charter.

Why do you think it is possible to decouple these matters? Whether there is any chance of anything illegal going on here depends completely on the status of the Houdini source code. 'Enforcing the charter' is not the same thing as "do whatever Graham tells you to do". There is no rule to that effect in the charter.

Note that the charter contains both rules for protecting members from abuse by each other, and rules for protecting the host from liability. Rule #5 only serves the latter purpose, as members cannot possibly be damaged even by obviously illegal material (that is not their property) being offered here. If you think a subject could be illegal, and this freaks you out, just don't read it. What will be designated as legal / illegal / questionable is purely a matter between the moderators and the host. Not of members who want to impose their world view on others. Those have neither the right nor the reason to complain about this.

[IanKennedy]

Yes, I did not know that Houdini is a modified stockfish,


That’s the sad thing about computerchess today that almost all engines are more or less stockfish,

That’s the reason I am not using my pcs anymore.

Neither desktop nor tower or laptop.

I am only using my iPad and my mobile phones and my dedicated chess computers.
I completely stopped doing computerchess on pc Hardware due to the fact that the engines are stockfish clones.
I am not interested in modified stockfish clones, and daily i read in this forum engine x or y gets updated from version x to version y or z.
And ?
Who really cares in times where stockfish is open source and anybody can be a robert houdart or vasik rajlich.

Anybody can use stockfish code or the more clever use stockfish ideas,


And I am, as a customer or user, I am not interested I yet another stockfish cloned engine,

I am interested in an engine that is DIFFERENT,
Made by people who are DIFFERENT. Not by people who came from nirvana and suddenly have an engine of 2700-3400 ELO.

I am not interested to be betrayed that obvious.

Look the programmers I met worked very hard and long to reach the level they had,


John Stanback, christophe theron, Mark uniacke , Chris whittington, Ed Schröder, ...Mark lefler, ....


A very long way,



I met John Stanback in very early days when his engine was NOT that high like WASP is now.
I met christophe theron when his engine was NOT that high participating in paris.
Chris whittington, I tried to Contact him when I had an Atari ST and his Program did 1-3 searches maximum ,
But I was highly interested because I saw that it is playing intelligent.
Or mark Uniacke, I met him when his engine had no mouse input at all. And a few years later he won a championship title.
All those guys made their way in days where open source were not 2800 elo strong,

I met mark Lefler at the championship in Munich. His engine “now” was cool.
And mark knew many tricks and was an amateur magician,



All these things were interesting, the engines different,
But today,
The engines are boring IMO.
Copy paste stockfish routines with elo ratings above 2700.

Not interesting anymore, not for me,

Not sure we even had open source when Mark Uniacke started! I think Crafty was unleashed around the time a lot of folk were first going online. Before that it was pretty much GNUChess from what I recall, which I never looked at - probably didn't have the access anyway.

[mvanthoor]

I'm reacting in this thread because of the post below. I don't want to get involved in the Stockfish <=> Houdini problem, apart for one thing.

Use Google to search for "Een avondje met Robert Houdart", and you'll find an article (Dutch, PDF), written around the time of Stockfish 2 or 3 (2012). In this article, it is said that Robert Houdart has openly stated to be using idea's earlier used in Robbolito, Ippolit, Stockfish, and Crafty, but it also says that it is suspected that Houdini might contain code from other engines (but that evidence is circumstantial).

I have known about this article almost since the time of publication, but to be honest, I haven't cared for any other commercial engine, ever, but Fritz from from Frans Morsch and The King from Johan de Koning. The reason I cared about them? Because of the user interface they were wrapped in: ChessBase for Fritz, and Chessmaster for The King. Since I bought a DGT-board in 2008, I use Chessbase GUI's only, because Chessmaster doesn't support it (without hacks) and has stopped development entirely in 2007. (Arena supports it, but when I last tried it a few years ago, this support was very glitchy.)

Yes, I did not know that Houdini is a modified stockfish,


That’s the sad thing about computerchess today that almost all engines are more or less Stockfish...

Not Stockfish per se, but what saddens me is that it is now so easy to "write" your "own" chess engine. You just pick an open source engine you're capable of understanding, modify it a bit, and BAM!, you have a 3000+ ELO starting point if you want to.

That’s the reason I am not using my pcs anymore.

I still use PC's, but since there are very strong open source chess engines, I only buy chess programs if there is a serious improvement in their GUI, or because the version I have doesn't run on my current Windows-version anymore. I have bought Fritz 5.32, Fritz 11, and Fritz 17 (even though Fritz >= 14 isn't even Fritz anymore). If I need or want a stronger engine for analysis than the one delivered with Fritz, I use an open source one.

And I am, as a customer or user, I am not interested I yet another stockfish cloned engine.

I'm not either. I'm only interested new engines such as Stash or Minic on this forum, derivatives coming from weak or tutorial engines, such as Weiss on this forum, and original strong engines, such as Stockfish, Ethereal, Arasan. (The list isn't complete and in random order.)

I'm also always very sceptical if a new engine suddenly pops onto the scene sporting 3000+ ELO.

I am interested in an engine that is DIFFERENT,
Made by people who are DIFFERENT. Not by people who came from nirvana and suddenly have an engine of 2700-3400 ELO.

Same. That's one of the reasons I'm doing all the work from scratch, and not in C, on purpose.