Fwd: Open letter to the CSVN

[Terry McCracken]

The irony is that all those that predicted ICGA will become irrelevant, now suddenly find that it is CSVN that has become irrelevant.

No
It is not the case.

Komodo Junior Crafty Shredder Sjeng Hiarcs are not going to participate in their events but I hope to see other strong programs in that tournament that are not Rybka.

Looking at the names that did not sign the letter
possible candidates are Houdini,Critter, Stockfish and Naum

Houdini is a possible candidate?

Don't be so surprised, some prefer their personal reality.

[Uri Blass]

The irony is that all those that predicted ICGA will become irrelevant, now suddenly find that it is CSVN that has become irrelevant.

No
It is not the case.

Komodo Junior Crafty Shredder Sjeng Hiarcs are not going to participate in their events but I hope to see other strong programs in that tournament that are not Rybka.

Looking at the names that did not sign the letter
possible candidates are Houdini,Critter, Stockfish and Naum

Houdini is a possible candidate?

Yes
If they accept Rybka they can also decide to accept houdini.

[Thomas Mayer]

The irony is that all those that predicted ICGA will become irrelevant, now suddenly find that it is CSVN that has become irrelevant.

No
It is not the case.

Komodo Junior Crafty Shredder Sjeng Hiarcs are not going to participate in their events but I hope to see other strong programs in that tournament that are not Rybka.

Looking at the names that did not sign the letter
possible candidates are Houdini,Critter, Stockfish and Naum

Houdini is a possible candidate?

Yes
If they accept Rybka they can also decide to accept houdini.

Right, it wouldn't matter anymore... Cloners & Hackers Festival, maybe a good name for upcoming CSVN events ?

[Graham Banks]

For the record, David, on behalf of the ICGA secretariat responsible for this, sent them a letter pointing out the errors in their public statement. So far as I know, we've seen nothing in response.

Copied here with Cock's permission:

Hi Graham

Ed Schröder told me about the existing open letter, which is discussed for a couple of days.

The CSVN did not receive this letter untill now. I just read it a couple of minutes ago. It is 1.18 a.m. now.

I will respond on the Net after the Board makes a decission to do so and on behalf of the Board.

First personal reaction? In short sentences....?

The ICGA made a statement, just as the CSVN did.
In their statement the Board of CSVN did his utmost to give facts. More than one. And those facts raised question marks. Not all question marks seperately were enough to refuse the banning of Rybka. Of course not. But all together they did not give us a good feeling. These facts have nothing to do with the technical stuff. The Board has no opinion about the technical stuff whatsoever, nor wants to take part in the technical discussions.
The open letter repeats the well known arguments of the ICGA cs. But does not give answers on our doubts. Why should we change our minds? I do not have a good feeling by repeating again and again. That is not debating.

In my vision it is very clear: the programmers have a problem. What is a clone? Untill now there is no clear answer on that question.
They should solve it themselves. It can not be solved by the CSVN. If all experts agree, there is no problem anymore.

After that the CSVN Board will organise again if there are enough participants..

If not? We can do many other nice things in our spare time....

kind regards
Cock de Gorter

[IWB]

Right, it wouldn't matter anymore... Cloners & Hackers Festival, maybe a good name for upcoming CSVN events ?

I wrote a month ago when the CSVN paper was released: "Whith this requiered level of evidence they can only justify to deny engines when they confess in advance!" It seems they did not think about that consequence of their decision!
The CSVN is a prisoner of interest. If they can't escape they will vanish in insignificance. I am crossing fingers that they come to mind as I always liked that tourney!

Bye
Ingo

[bob]

For the record, David, on behalf of the ICGA secretariat responsible for this, sent them a letter pointing out the errors in their public statement. So far as I know, we've seen nothing in response.

Copied here with Cock's permission:

Hi Graham

Ed Schröder told me about the existing open letter, which is discussed for a couple of days.

The CSVN did not receive this letter untill now. I just read it a couple of minutes ago. It is 1.18 a.m. now.

I will respond on the Net after the Board makes a decission to do so and on behalf of the Board.

First personal reaction? In short sentences....?

The ICGA made a statement, just as the CSVN did.
In their statement the Board of CSVN did his utmost to give facts. More than one. And those facts raised question marks. Not all question marks seperately were enough to refuse the banning of Rybka. Of course not. But all together they did not give us a good feeling. These facts have nothing to do with the technical stuff. The Board has no opinion about the technical stuff whatsoever, nor wants to take part in the technical discussions.
The open letter repeats the well known arguments of the ICGA cs. But does not give answers on our doubts. Why should we change our minds? I do not have a good feeling by repeating again and again. That is not debating.

In my vision it is very clear: the programmers have a problem. What is a clone? Untill now there is no clear answer on that question.
They should solve it themselves. It can not be solved by the CSVN. If all experts agree, there is no problem anymore.

After that the CSVN Board will organise again if there are enough participants..

If not? We can do many other nice things in our spare time....

kind regards
Cock de Gorter

Tell Cock he is an idiot. For the following reasons...

First, he claimed that several programmers that had firmly stated that they did not believe Vas had copied Fruit code had SUDDENLY changed their minds. Ask any who have posted that thought about changing their mind. Tord. Others. They changed their mind over the 5+ years we have been gathering and presenting the data. 5+ years is "sudden"? False statement number 1.

Second, he claimed that we did not examine any public version of Rybka. That the "version" (singular, notice) we examined did not play in any ICGA event. False. We looked at Rybka 1.6.1 which was sent to ChessWar, we looked at 1.0 beta, and 2.3.2 and 2.3.2a which DID compete in the ICGA tournaments. 1.0 beta, 2.3.2 and 2.3.2a WERE distributed, and still are on the Rybka web site. We didn't just look at one version, we looked at 4. All were given to others by Vas. And we did look at a version that played in an ICGA event, as verified by the person that operated Rybka in a WCCC event (Lukas). False statement number 2.

Third, he claimed that no other WCCC competitors had been examined. False. If you go to the ICGA web site, 6 different programs have been kicked out of ICGA competitions. We are in the process of looking at another. False statement number 3.

In baseball, that is "three strikes and he's out."

Finally, his statement above, quoted here:

The open letter repeats the well known arguments of the ICGA cs. But does not give answers on our doubts. Why should we change our minds?

The letter doesn't give any 'answers on their doubts'? It would appear to me it refutes every "doubt" he quoted. That's simply beyond belief... His final statement, "the programmers should decide." Which group comprises the majority of programmers? those that believe Vas copied Fruit, or those that believe he didn't? The latter list numbers just a few. Less than 6. How about the other list? 16 signed the original letter of protest. Others weighed in later, Ken Thompson, for example. He's not going "with the programmers" he is going "against them." Which is fine if he doesn't care whether they participate or not...

[bob]

I think that part of the letter is clearly wrong.

" Rybka is a without a shred of doubt a direct derivative of Crafty/Fruit and Mr. Rajlich concealed these origins from the Tournament Director."


They never checked Rybka3 or Rybka4 so they can tell something about old Rybka and not about new rybka.

I don't understand why any logical person would consider this an important distinction. If I went to a mechanic to get work done and he charged me for stuff he didn't do, I would never go back to him again, ever.... How many times do you have to be sucker punched before you get smart?

If such a mechanic had some kind of change of heart, he would have to give me powerful evidence that something had changed and it would have to start with a very sincere apology and admitting what he had done and there is good chance that would not be enough. We don't see anything like that here.

It may not be important for the decision not to pariticipate or to be against Vas but I think that it should be important for the content of the letter.

I see a clear difference between the claim
"Rybka is a direct derivative of Crafty/Fruit "
and the claim:
"Rybka was a direct derivative of Crafty(more than 6 years ago) and a direct derivative of Fruit including Rybka2.3.2a)"

Vas is clearly more quilty in the first case.

The statement, "Rybka is a direct derivative of Crafty/Fruit" is about as accurate as you can get. You are seriously nitpicking here. It's very easy to understand that this applies to older version of Rybka more than newer versions - after all the word "direct derivative" can only apply to one version. Each subsequent version is less like the original. There is nothing whatsoever misleading about this.

The idea that you should wait for Vas to make as many different changes as possible and judge him on the most changed version of Rybka is rather silly. Sooner or later he will make enough changes that it will be difficult to prove it is a Fruit derivative even though it is. Is that really the point of this, to hide the truth as much as possible?

I wish to spend my two cents here: one cent to say I agree with ICGA panel sentence and the last cent to put a question.

Let us assume I want to build my first chess program, so I take the good old TSCP and I start making experiments to learn how the whole stuff works. At a point I'm able to improve it and I call it kkk v. 0.x. I build as many 0.x versions as I can, until I decided I learned enough from it and I build my engine kkk v. 1.0, with 0% code from the original TSCP. Should it be considered a derivative?

Call it what you want, but at least two programs participated (openly) in ICGA in that situation: Comet and Ferret. Both started as GNUchess.

Miguel

Can't speak for Comet. Can for Ferret. Bruce sent me the source around 1996 or so. It looked nothing like gnuchess by the time he had done his thing. Which is exactly as it should be done...

Of course, I could keep all 0.x versions private, so nobody would never say anything about cloning, copying, etc... But, what if I release all of them? Is the only difference between an honest and a dishonest work the fact of releasing all versions?

Thanks for opinions...

[M ANSARI]

I think that part of the letter is clearly wrong.

" Rybka is a without a shred of doubt a direct derivative of Crafty/Fruit and Mr. Rajlich concealed these origins from the Tournament Director."


They never checked Rybka3 or Rybka4 so they can tell something about old Rybka and not about new rybka.

I don't understand why any logical person would consider this an important distinction. If I went to a mechanic to get work done and he charged me for stuff he didn't do, I would never go back to him again, ever.... How many times do you have to be sucker punched before you get smart?

If such a mechanic had some kind of change of heart, he would have to give me powerful evidence that something had changed and it would have to start with a very sincere apology and admitting what he had done and there is good chance that would not be enough. We don't see anything like that here.

It may not be important for the decision not to pariticipate or to be against Vas but I think that it should be important for the content of the letter.

I see a clear difference between the claim
"Rybka is a direct derivative of Crafty/Fruit "
and the claim:
"Rybka was a direct derivative of Crafty(more than 6 years ago) and a direct derivative of Fruit including Rybka2.3.2a)"

Vas is clearly more quilty in the first case.

The statement, "Rybka is a direct derivative of Crafty/Fruit" is about as accurate as you can get. You are seriously nitpicking here. It's very easy to understand that this applies to older version of Rybka more than newer versions - after all the word "direct derivative" can only apply to one version. Each subsequent version is less like the original. There is nothing whatsoever misleading about this.

The idea that you should wait for Vas to make as many different changes as possible and judge him on the most changed version of Rybka is rather silly. Sooner or later he will make enough changes that it will be difficult to prove it is a Fruit derivative even though it is. Is that really the point of this, to hide the truth as much as possible?

I wish to spend my two cents here: one cent to say I agree with ICGA panel sentence and the last cent to put a question.

Let us assume I want to build my first chess program, so I take the good old TSCP and I start making experiments to learn how the whole stuff works. At a point I'm able to improve it and I call it kkk v. 0.x. I build as many 0.x versions as I can, until I decided I learned enough from it and I build my engine kkk v. 1.0, with 0% code from the original TSCP. Should it be considered a derivative?

Call it what you want, but at least two programs participated (openly) in ICGA in that situation: Comet and Ferret. Both started as GNUchess.

Miguel

Of course, I could keep all 0.x versions private, so nobody would never say anything about cloning, copying, etc... But, what if I release all of them? Is the only difference between an honest and a dishonest work the fact of releasing all versions?

Thanks for opinions...

Yes but they were not Rybka! Using ideas from open source programs is OK unless the engine is called Rybka. You should know that by now!

[Graham Banks]

Tell Cock he is an idiot.

Cock is a longstanding friend of mine through our shared interest in the Chessmaster engines.
I am not going to treat him like shit, just because he is part of a group that shares a different opinion about the ICGA decision than others do.
You can tell him yourself how you feel Bob.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Bob,

Code: Select all

Tell Cock he is an idiot.
In baseball, that is "three strikes and he's out."

Not sure Bob, in basketball I believe "five strikes". If I numbered the strikes by the open letters programmers I have so far an result of seven strikes.

Names are not important for myself. I never know before I have a proof. Most of programmers in the list of the open letters have closed sources. All the commercials are included. Do you know from how many of this programmers which undersign both open letters the own sources are checked?

I think, a programmer can "only" undersign such an open letter if here own sources are checked and a clear proof is available that all is based on an own work. Not speaking from ideas

Sorry, but the definition for idiot is:
All to know what other say him.

Now the first step is:
All the programmers with undersign such open letters have to give her "own" sources for a check. Not to Cock de Corter, Cock organized tourneys with a lot of success in the past.

The situation is completely absurd. Nobody can explain what is a clone, nobody will give here own sources for a check and persons with a logical opinions are idiots.

That's computerchess, powered by programmers.
My congratulation!

With all here intelligence, programmers should programming here programs. I think for an organization of a chess tourney you need an other intelligence, sorry but I can't produce an other opinion after all what I must read.

Furthermore, I know Cock de Corter personally. From the list of undersign programmes I know different personally too. I numbered two on the list of "Open Lettes Programmers".

Best
Frank