Time to rethink what Vasik Rajlich has done?

[hgm]

btw, whether or not Vas was directly asked for the source code, one would expect the reaction of an innocent man to be, "Look - here's the source code".

Exactly. And how much sense does it make to not ask for source code, while the tournament rules clearly specify you can, but out of the blue decide "hey, let's try to solve this by reverse engineering the damned thing".

That just defies credibility. ICGA was stupid, but they cannot have been that stupid.

[Rebel]

What me wonder - Anno 2021 we have a whole new (Github) generation of chess programmers not bothered by the use of taking ideas from open sources VERSUS the old guard, the ones without Github who had to invent wheels themselves, suddenly (2005) being faced with the open source of a top engine (Fruit 2.1), the start of a new era (programmers taking ideas) and the sentiments that came with that, it's that generation that started the cruel witch hunt on Rajlich, him ending on the pyre.

I have better hope on the new generation, I am pretty sure that after reading the material (please don't, but if you do) they will shake their heads.

[hgm]

Almost like coming from some parallel universe...

Chess programmers have been taking ideas since the eighties, even if you do take alpha-beta for granted. QS, null move, 0x88 boards, transposition tables. I still have the Van den Herik / Van Diepen book on my bookshelf, where such ideas are described. Fabien himself reported that Fruit did not contain any original ideas. So they must have been around and freely shared before Fruit.

[Rebel]

No mention of providing source code, is there? Check your facts before ranting in future.

None of us can know what David asked Vas. But that is not really relevant. Relevant is that I would have asked for source code.

We know what Levy asked Vas because we have the email traffic. No mention of source code.

You asserted Vas refused to provide source code. To assert that YOU need to show evidence of the request.
We have the evidence that there was NO such request made and therefore your assertion is without foundation and untrue.

I remember Vas (when asked) saying he never got a source code request.

[Rebel]

Almost like coming from some parallel universe...

Chess programmers have been taking ideas since the eighties, even if you do take alpha-beta for granted. QS, null move, 0x88 boards, transposition tables. I still have the Van den Herik / Van Diepen book on my bookshelf, where such ideas are described. Fabien himself reported that Fruit did not contain any original ideas. So they must have been around and freely shared before Fruit.

The subject is : taking ideas from the SOURCE CODE of a TOP engine.

Please pay attention.

[chrisw]

We know what Levy asked Vas because we have the email traffic. No mention of source code.

Well, like I said, it is irrelevant. But you only know what you have, not what you miss. So just out of interest, can you show us a sworn affidavit by David Levy that these are the only e-mails he sent? It is not what I heard, btw.

We have documentation, published and not queried for many years btw. Sourced from ICGA website and from Vas.
You have some hearsay. Allegedly.

I prefer unchallenged hard data documentation to your sayso.
Why doesn't ICGA website have the Levy email allegedly asking for source code? It doesn't, does it? Your sayso is rejected.

Bizarre. There's no prior mention in this thread of your running ICGA nor speaking from an as if.

Well, so you get low marks for understanding reading... I would have though it would be obviously clear that I was speaking from that pespective in my very first posting in that thread. But if you didn't get it then, at least you know it now.

Bizarre. You wrote, first post "I guess the life-time ban was just an overreaction by David Levy, because he was fed up by Vas' arrogant refusal to seriously cooperate in the investigation." and then later defined cooperation as "provide source code".

No mention of your running the ICGA nor speaking from an as if.

Let's get back from this side show, shall we? Back to Computer Chess.

ICGA did NOT ask Vas for source code, Vas can't be guilty of not providing something he was never asked for.

[hgm]

The subject is : taking ideas from the SOURCE CODE of a TOP engine.

What is the difference? Ideas are ideas, and however you got them, they remain the same ideas. Ideas are typically communicated as pseudo-code anyway, which also is a form of source code.

[hgm]

ICGA did NOT ask Vas for source code, Vas can't be guilty of not providing something he was never asked for.

Even if we would believe such a fairy tale, he was still negligent by not offering the source code spontaneously in his defense. Of course you can argue that under the 5th amendment he is not obliged to incriminate himself, but if showing the code would incriminate him, he was guilty to begin with.

You know what the English police says when they arrest someone? It is something to the effect of "You have the right to remain silent, but if you exercise that right it might later hurt your defense in court".

The problem is that your claims have to fight an uphill battle against an incredibly unfavorable prior likelihood, so that your rather weak evidence gets nowhere near overturning alternative theories. Such that your claims are simply false becouse you were poorly informed, or perhaps even just making it up.

[Graham Banks]

Reading and understanding the documents takes time: I have done it, but I'm not going to do it again. There seem to be links to the documents here.

Do yourself a favor, don't dive into that, stay healthy!

In short, Vas was convicted because he took too many ideas from Fruit.

What Madeleine is aiming at is the comparison between the sentiments of the 2005-2011 period and the sentiments of today regarding taking ideas (and how many) from other engines.

Even the 'took too many ideas' thing is problematical. Fruit author himself wrote that there were no original ideas in Fruit. For sure, all the 'ideas' identified by the panel authors in Rybka were known, used ideas around for a long time. It's not possible to identify the original origin (sorry!) of ideas that are in general use.
I think the people who think Rybka is derived from Fruit believe (feel) that Vas started with a copy of Fruit source and gradually modified it, including it's entire data structure (necessitating an entire rewrite, basically), until no Fruit remained.
The problem with that belief/feeling is that it is entirely unprovable. It's just a feeling/conviction, and you can't go around finding people guilty of things with severe consequences based on feelings.

The Fruit author had previously stated:

"...I am sorry to say that whether an engine is someone's "own work" makes little sense to me, although I understand that tournament directors would like a clear yes or no.

The reason is that all engines, whether amateur or commercial, share most of the techniques. Alpha-beta (of which PVS, NegaScout and MTD(f) are only derivatives), iterative deepening, check extensions, null move, etc ... are shared by most and have been published, mostly by researchers, some of them more than 30 years ago! Sure there are many different ways to represent the board and pieces but it only affects speed, which rarely amounts to more than a few dozen Elo Points.

There is one component that so far is distinct in each engine (although some older ones were probably "inspired" by Crafty): the evaluation function. But there again the evaluation features are hardly ever very original: the principles of sound chess play can be found in hundreds of books. It's hardly a secret that rooks should be placed on open files, something that Fruit does not even know (though rook mobility partly emulates this piece of knowledge).

So what is left for improvisation? A lot of course, otherwise all engines would be equal. But say in terms of quantity of code they don't represent so much. Among this "lot" I think there is a large place for things that cannot be extracted: programming style and ways of linking engine components, making them work together. Not something that most would consider as a "chess-engine technique" like null move.

OK let's stop here and do a little sum up with Fruit in mind: I can't think of a search feature in it that was not described before. Ditto for evaluation terms (except perhaps a few drawish-endgame rules that activate in one game in a hundred). There are specific principles that I follow in Fruit that gives it a personality somewhat (like never truncating the PV and making sure that mate-depth claims are always correct), but they probably have no impact on strength at all and could even hurt a little.

Can I claim that I have written it all on my own? "Yes", I typed all the code myself. Without help??? Certainly not, hence my point: "it makes no sense".

Sorry for the dramatic style ... One positive point now: instead of seeing engine authors competing against each others, I see them as cooperating (mostly indirectly) and making progress together, since they have so much in common, whether they want it or not.

My opinion anyway ... "

[towforce]

btw, whether or not Vas was directly asked for the source code, one would expect the reaction of an innocent man to be, "Look - here's the source code".

Exactly. And how much sense does it make to not ask for source code, while the tournament rules clearly specify you can, but out of the blue decide "hey, let's try to solve this by reverse engineering the damned thing".

That just defies credibility. ICGA was stupid, but they cannot have been that stupid.

This is from memory from when I read the report years ago, so apologies if I'm wrong, but I thought that it reported that Vas had said that he didn't have the source code for the version used in the competition in question? I might have read that somewhere else. It would be useful if anyone has the time for someone to read the report and check what everyone is saying. One thing I feel sure of: the report was written by at least two people - not just one.