Strelka -- Open source

[Uri Blass]

There is no law that I am not allowed to stick my pencil in your eye...

Of course there is such law, covering all kind of injuries. And in addition to being a penal crime, you will probably be sued for millions.

Yes, and of course there is a law protecting the intellectual property.

Alex

There is a law but I think that the law is irrelevant after Vas allowed other to use rybka1.0 beta chess engine without restrictions.

Uri

[hristo]

Hi Hristo,

I don't think it is our interpretation of "free" that is different. I think it is our interpretation of "without restriction" that is different. For me "without restriction" means "without restriction".

Hi Robin,
perhaps you are correct and our differences are in the term "without restriction". Of course, there are always implied or explicitly stated restrictions and one cannot pull out a few words from a legal document and then scrap the rest as if it didn't exist. I've been to court with regard to related matters and have had to deal with lawyers ... and I'm almost certain that "without restrictions" doesn't mean what you think it means.

Anyway, legalize can be incredibly twisted and nonintuitive. The point is that one cannot blindly state that disassembly is legal in all cases and it is even less likely that the information obtained through this process can be legally used in the way Strelka's author might do it.

Regards,
Hristo

There isn't much "legalize" in the Rybka beta 1.0 license agreement to "pull out a few words from". Here is the full text of the Rybka 1.0 "Contents & License" section of the readme:

Contents & License

In this package, you will find the Rybka 1.0 Beta chess engine (dated Dec 4, 2005), as well as the Turk opening book by Djordje Vidanovic. Both versions of these components are free and can be used and transmitted without restriction.

This is fairly clear. You [the user] are given the right to use and transmit the program without restrictions. What you are not given is intellectual property rights and copyrights -- those belong to Vas and unless explicitly stated you [the user] don't have any claim on them.
The "right to use and distribute" and "the intellectual property rights" are distinctly different subjects that don't implicitly trump each-other, but rather put limitations on what can and cannot be done. In this sense you cannot use a clause from one agreement to invalidate other agreements that weren't explicitly named.

Hristo, I am sympathetic to your point of view and I am not in any way advocating software piracy. But I also think the simple fact is that if Vas didn't want people to decompile his code he blew it. He would have had more protection with no user agreement at all.

I don't think that Vas "blew it", but rather made it a bit more difficult -- all he has to do is show that his license didn't confer intellectual property rights.
If he had provided no agreement at all, then nothing would be different with respect to IP, since IP is not part of his agreement to start with and thus the common law applies. For example if you are given a book from which the "copyright" statements had been removed that doesn't make you a "copyright" holder. If the book had a license that said "You can use this book without restrictions" then again you are not the copyright holder of the book, simply because "usage" doesn't transfer the IP to you.

So, "use without restrictions" cannot be taken out of context and pretend that it means things that it doesn't -- namely, there is no implicit (nor explicit) transfer of IP-rights.

Regards,
Hristo

[Alexander Schmidt]

There is a law but I think that the law is irrelevant after Vas allowed other to use rybka1.0 beta chess engine without restrictions.Uri

Decompiling and useing software are two very different things.

Alex

[hgm]

Yes. Decompiling is using it, but using it is not always decompiling.

[hristo]

Yes. Decompiling is using it, but using it is not always decompiling.

The act of de-compilation (disassembly) is not necessarily illegal, the same way converting the "exe" to a "wav" file and then playing it out through your speakers isn't. However, disassembly with the intent to obtain intellectual property, to which you have no entitlement, is more than likely illegal. (Of course, there are special cases ... but the situation at hand is nowhere near a "special case".)

Cheers,
Hristo

[Alexander Schmidt]

Vas allowed other to use rybka1.0 beta chess engine

A little addition from Rybkachess site, how to use Rybka:

"You must install it in a chess graphical user interface of your choice. If you are not familiar with this procedure, please follow our Rybka installation instructions."

http://www.rybkachess.com/index.php?aus ... Q+for+Beta

Cant find anything regarding decompiling.

Alex

[hgm]

However, disassembly with the intent to obtain intellectual property, to which you have no entitlement, is more than likely illegal.

I doubt this, as most license agreements do explicitly mention decompilation or disassembling as something that is forbidden. And why would they do that if that is already automatically the case?

[slobo]

Yes. Decompiling is using it, but using it is not always decompiling.

The act of de-compilation (disassembly) is not necessarily illegal, the same way converting the "exe" to a "wav" file and then playing it out through your speakers isn't. However, disassembly with the intent to obtain intellectual property, to which you have no entitlement, is more than likely illegal. (Of course, there are special cases ... but the situation at hand is nowhere near a "special case".)

Cheers,
Hristo

Tell us something about Topalov & his menager´s actions against Kramnik. I would like to see how your feeling for justice works: with double standard or not.

[gerold]

Yes. Decompiling is using it, but using it is not always decompiling.

The act of de-compilation (disassembly) is not necessarily illegal, the same way converting the "exe" to a "wav" file and then playing it out through your speakers isn't. However, disassembly with the intent to obtain intellectual property, to which you have no entitlement, is more than likely illegal. (Of course, there are special cases ... but the situation at hand is nowhere near a "special case".)

Cheers,
Hristo

I don't want to go o.t. But i don't think that program works in
Arena. I keep getting the message.Clone,Clone Clone.

Happy New Year Hristo.

Gerold.

[hgm]

(1) Use without restriction does not feel like permission to decompile.

It seems obvious to me that not being allowed to decompile something is a restriction.

Even if there would be general laws against decompilation without permission, putting in the license agreement that the use is 'unrestricted' sounds to me as waiving this law. Intended or not, the formulation of the license agreement blows any chances for legal recourse.