Is EMAN the future number one?

[Dann Corbit]

Eman is a strong engine (based on Stockfish) but since the engine author has made it extremely difficult to test his "creation" without running over to the Infinitychess forum and begging for a test copy.

Can't confirm that. I wrote a mail to the programmer Khalid Omar, and he sent me the engine for free - period. What's the problem?

Great. He's also obligated to supply you with the source code that created the engine. Please request that.

I can't imagine that the author of Eman is a criminal.

Besides that:
It would be interesting to publish here a big list with comparative tests.

How similar they are:
Eman---------> Stockfish
Komodo -----> Stockfish
Houdini -----> Stockfish
Ethereal -----> Stockfish
Xiphos -------> Stockfish
RofChade----> Stockfish
Booot---------> Stockfish
etc.

The results could be very surprising...
In any case, we would then know more really which engines actually "quoted" Stockfish particularly strongly...

https://www.rebel13.nl/misc/sim2019.html

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Houdini has recently been revealed to be a Stockfish clone.
Having personally seen the source code for Komodo, I am convinced it is not a stockfish clone.
The same is true for Ethereal, Xiphos and Booot, but I have not studied the source of RofChade.
If there were significant similarities in algorithms, that is OK anyway, what is illegal is not the reuse of algorithms but the reuse of code.

Now, let's suppose (for a moment) that all of the above engines were 100% Stockfish with a few small changes. That would not exonerate Eman, but rather would "dis-honorate" all of them. IOW, they would all be breaking the law.

If murder is rampant, then murder is still not OK, it's only rampant.
If stealing is rampant, it's still not OK, it's only rampant.

Most of the above programs are open source and you can examine for yourself and decide if you think someone has taken code beyond fair use.
Quite frankly, I do not understand why people think it is OK to break the law. It is just as puzzling to me as the original law breakers.

[matejst]

I am not sure that he is legally bound to do anything. The engine is not publicly available. The author sends Eman by mail, upon request, and does his best to prevent sharing. In his country, it could be well considered as private.

[AndrewGrant]

I am not sure that he is legally bound to do anything. The engine is not publicly available. The author sends Eman by mail, upon request, and does his best to prevent sharing. In his country, it could be well considered as private.

If he provided person X with the binary, he must provide person X with the source code or information about how to obtain the source code.

Anything less, and it is a violation of the GNU GPLv3 license. No confusion about it.

[MikeB]

The "creator" should make the source code available, showing respect for Stockfish's GPL license. Maybe then his creation might be considered and respected as a quasi-independent engine product.

Opinions differ on that...

And I quote " he no longer had to start from scratch, but took the open source engine Stockfish and started tweaking it."
hmmm sounds like an illegal clone to me if he is not releasing the source. I really don't care at this point - there are probably hundreds of illegal SF clones floating around - but you should know illegal clones are not held in high respect here - this forum may not be for you. If someone is tweaking SF and releasing binaries , like me and the authors of Sting, SuGar, Crystal, and Corchess , the right thing to do is for the author to publish his code.

https://github.com/MichaelB7/Stockfish

[Graham Banks]

...If someone is tweaking SF and releasing binaries , like me and the authors of Sting, SuGar, Crystal, and Corchess , the right thing to do is for the author to publish his code...

ShashChess is also released with source code.

[Glarean]

Most of the above programs are open source and you can examine for yourself and decide if you think someone has taken code beyond fair use.
Quite frankly, I do not understand why people think it is OK to break the law. It is just as puzzling to me as the original law breakers.

Hmm... I'm not so sure about the definitive facts.

It's true that anything that can be considered a derivative work of the GPL software is also licensed under the GPL when distributed.
But when exactly a "derivative work" exists, the GPL only explains it in outline and cannot always be clarified beyond doubt.

This is also due to the fact that there are countless conceivable ways in which program components can interact with each other; the regulation in the GPL is thus naturally quite abstract.

Therefore, it is ultimately also a question of valuation in which cases one assumes independent code components and when one describes code components as "derived" from a program.

As far as I know, there are no relevant international court decisions on similar cases.
So to what extent the Eman programmer actually violates applicable law, I personally can't definitively judge.
Until then I as a user and chess player am not unhappy that with Eman 5.6 the probably currently most powerful engine in the world is available (for free!) for my chess analyses and matches

BTW: Maybe the Eman programmer himself will soon come up with the idea to give away his source code together with the engine?
But maybe he doesn't have to do that at all; maybe there is a different jurisdiction in the United Arab Emirates?

There are a few loose ends...

Greetings: Walter

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[Glarean]

I'm not interested in trying to explain this again, so I'll just leave it at "I hope you're trolling"

You don't have to explain anything. It's enough if you have a little humor...

[AndrewGrant]

It's true that anything that can be considered a derivative work of the GPL software is also licensed under the GPL when distributed.
But when exactly a "derivative work" exists, the GPL only explains it in outline and cannot always be clarified beyond doubt.

Official Site for Eman: https://eman.zohosites.com/
Literally sitting in the middle of the page: "Eman is a UCI chess engine by Khalid Omar. It is derived from Stockfish, a very strong world class and open-source chess engine."

Time to abandon this thread, but my parting comment will be a prediction, which has come true everytime in this situation: Eman is Stockfish + a bunch of yellow patches, some copy-pasted "learning" / Book code that users have floated around forever, and nothing more. People who really know what they are doing don't just fork a project. They either add to the source, or they make their own.

[corres]

Most of the above programs are open source and you can examine for yourself and decide if you think someone has taken code beyond fair use.
Quite frankly, I do not understand why people think it is OK to break the law. It is just as puzzling to me as the original law breakers.

Hmm... I'm not so sure about the definitive facts.
It's true that anything that can be considered a derivative work of the GPL software is also licensed under the GPL when distributed.
But when exactly a "derivative work" exists, the GPL only explains it in outline and cannot always be clarified beyond doubt.
This is also due to the fact that there are countless conceivable ways in which program components can interact with each other; the regulation in the GPL is thus naturally quite abstract.
Therefore, it is ultimately also a question of valuation in which cases one assumes independent code components and when one describes code components as "derived" from a program.
As far as I know, there are no relevant international court decisions on similar cases.
So to what extent the Eman programmer actually violates applicable law, I personally can't definitively judge.
Until then I as a user and chess player am not unhappy that with Eman 5.6 the probably currently most powerful engine in the world is available (for free!) for my chess analyses and matches
BTW: Maybe the Eman programmer himself will soon come up with the idea to give away his source code together with the engine?
But maybe he doesn't have to do that at all; maybe there is a different jurisdiction in the United Arab Emirates?
There are a few loose ends...
Greetings: Walter.

Without the source of Eman you can not decide about the truth.
But this is the "Trap of the 22th" what was created by the author of Eman.

[zullil]

Hmm... I'm not so sure about the definitive facts.

It's true that anything that can be considered a derivative work of the GPL software is also licensed under the GPL when distributed.
But when exactly a "derivative work" exists, the GPL only explains it in outline and cannot always be clarified beyond doubt.

From https://eman.zohosites.com/, with emphasis added by me:

"Eman is a UCI chess engine by Khalid Omar. It is derived from Stockfish, a very strong world class and open-source chess engine."

The distributor of Eman himself declares it to be derived from Stockfish. In other words, Eman is a derivative of Stockfish. Seems refreshingly clear to me.