I'm in doubt if RobboLito is a clone

[RaimundHeid]

b) Publish the source for free.
Only if you honestly opt for b) the initial assumption can be true. If the initial assumption is false you will only have to ponder which strong program it was that has been re-engineered.

You didn't quite get my point. I meant what about having the source code of a well known program but wanting to let it look like as if you had come to it by disassembling, not to be asked where else you could have it from?

The sources of which program do you have in mind? I don't think this leads us to a different view of the case in general...

[RaimundHeid]

a) Promote and sell an engine for 50$ to thousands of customers and earn some applause.
b) Publish the source for free.

You missed one important point: The author seems to hat capitalism

It would be no problem to sell this product, even with opened source noone finds an evidence it is a clone.

It will not be possible to positively prove that IPP/ROB is a Rybka clone unless 'her' complete sources are made available to some committee of experts who

1) compile them and ascertain the result is 'Rybka'.
2) compare signiciant parts (recursive search, eval terms) of them with the IPP/ROB sources.

I doubt that this will ever happen but it's the only way to 'proof without doubt'; anything else is speculation that can be challenged until the universe is frozen. But I don't think a positive proof is really required if you apply common sense. Well, just my opinion.

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

This is completely false. There is no need to have the sources from Rybka to confirm Ippolit/RobboLite are clones.

Nothing more is needed than a compile of either of the clone engines and Rybka loaded in a debugger/disassembler. (And someone who knows what he's doing)

[bob]

I don't speculate. Zach has based a definitive conclusion based on the inconclusive. Even if he were right.......

What goes around comes around...

That does not make it right, to say the above statement. If he really feels that way, the victory of revenge is most often only piric.

Christopher

It's certainly not inconclusive to me. There is no question what took place to me, and several other people.

Vas has made what I would guess is quite a bit of money dishonestly by stealing from open source. Allowing open source to benefit from what he has done is only fair IMO. I suppose two wrongs don't make a right, but one wrong doesn't either.

I think this whole situation would be a bit different if the atmosphere in the community were different. Nobody, minus a very select few, listened to the concerns that were made about Rybka 1. I don't want Vas to quit, I just want everyone to acknowledge what actually happened, Vas included.

Methinks you go too far!
Your comments smack more of an anti-Vas crusade rather than an anti-piracy crusade. However I'm picking you'll get away with it because one of the mods at least agrees with you.

So you believe we should moderate a post even though it is based purely on factual observations, even if the observations are unpopular? So we are a popularity poll rather than a factually based message board? This should not have happened, but it did. The genie is out of the bottle, and will remain so. There's not much that can be done to make everyone happy now. A little honesty would help, but is unlikely.

[bob]

Vas has made what I would guess is quite a bit of money dishonestly by stealing from open source. Allowing open source to benefit from what he has done is only fair IMO. I suppose two wrongs don't make a right, but one wrong doesn't either.

I think this whole situation would be a bit different if the atmosphere in the community were different. Nobody, minus a very select few, listened to the concerns that were made about Rybka 1. I don't want Vas to quit, I just want everyone to acknowledge what actually happened, Vas included.

Methinks you go too far!
Your comments smack more of an anti-Vas crusade rather than an anti-piracy crusade. However I'm picking you'll get away with it because one of the mods at least agrees with you.

Everyone has the right to express his opinion Graham,including Zach
Cheers,
Dr.D

Stand by for the sequel to Witchfinder General.

This was _never_ a "witch finder" operation. It was a technical investigation that led to conclusions that could not be dismissed. There is a big difference. I recall that some called the Charles Manson case a "witch hunt" as well, with freedom of religion and such nonsense as justification to leave him alone.

[bob]

If we assume that author of this code is Russian then comments could be in Russian as well. So it could be easier to remove them then to translate them especially if his English langauge skills are on the level of their wiki site.

Do you realize how difficult it is to remove comments? Who, in their right minds, would take the time to do that? I'd suspect it would take me a couple of hours to edit every file in crafty by hand and carefully remove the comments. Then a couple of more hours at least to fix what I accidentally broke when doing this. People release source code with non-English comments all the time. This explanation is simply way too far out in left field to be considered.

[bob]

What if there actually are comments in the original code, but the programmer simply has chosen to remove them from the public version? I mean, concluding it cannot have been written by a human just because there are no comments?! No sorry, I don't buy that.

Don't give me those "Uri explanations". Yes, a room full of monkeys _could_ have produced this program too. Or a room full of monkeys _could_ have deleted all the comments from an existing program, without damaging the program. No I can't prove that did not happen, because it is impossible to prove something did _not_ happen somewhere.

I think monkeys are not needed. Just run

Code: Select all

gcc -E original_source.cpp

And the gcc preprocessor does exactly what we can see in the published source (stripped comments included).

I am very confident that what is published is the preprocessed file, i.e. the output of gcc -E on the original source file (with comments).

The reason for publishing this instead of the original I really don't know. But the fact that I don't know the reason it doesn't mean that it does not exsist

I don't buy it. When I looked, I did not see macro expansions. Suce as simple input and output which turns into macros.

[bob]

That is simply bogus reasoning. Someone releases the source, so that others can see what is being done, but they remove the comments to make it harder? That won't pass any sort of "reasonableness" test. I looked at the code when it first came out. It was pretty clear how it was derived initially, because it looks exactly like what a highly optimized program would look like once compiler has finished optimizing.

Could it be that the looking like of the code is the result of an effort, to let it look like gained by disassembling, even if this is not so?

Anything is possible. Probability is a different issue. To do that much work to make the thing look as it looks would imply some justification for doing this. What would this be??? What gain to they recoup for the effort expended?

[RaimundHeid]

This is completely false. There is no need to have the sources from Rybka to confirm Ippolit/RobboLite are clones.

Nothing more is needed than a compile of either of the clone engines and Rybka loaded in a debugger/disassembler. (And someone who knows what he's doing)

You are absolutely right!

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

Do you realize how difficult it is to remove comments?

Given that C doesn't allow nesting them, I'd say it's trivial? Did I miss anything?

(I don't disagree on anything else you said - just nitpicking here)