peter wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:10 pm
Madeleine Birchfield wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:42 pm
However, why wasn't any of the other top commercial engines at the time, such as the ones listed in the interview, Fritz, Hiarcs, Zappa, Spike, List, investigated as well for their possible violation of Fruit's GPL?
List was.
From here:
https://www.chessprogramming.org/List_(Program)
List participated at the WCCC 2003 in Graz, not represented by its author himself, but by Erdogan Günes. Fritz Reul, being circumvented with examination commitments, did not act appropriate to prove his program was not a clone, as accused due to an official protest during the tournament. As a consequence, List was disqualified after eight of eleven rounds [6] [7]. In 2005, Fritz Reul was rehabilitated by the ICGA, after List's source code was inspected by an expert approved by the ICGA [8], who stated List was definitely not a clone of any other program, and that it contains some new ideas in chess programming [9] [10].
List-Loop affair is yet another example of the corrupt ICGA of that time, involving, this time ICGA long time board member and officer and ex-computer chess programmer, computer chess expert, ICGA TD and arbiter Jaap van den Herik.
Loop-List or whatever it was called at the time was subject of a cloning complaint and author Reul got banned by ICGA around 2005 or so.
Loop-List was also the source code base for a phd project by Reul, supervised by expert Jaap van den Herik.
Japanese publisher Nintendo approached ICGA/van den Herik asking for advice on a suitable chess engine for this Wii console.
Van den Herik then proposed Reul engine List-Loop and “set up” the contract with Nintendo. It’s usual btw to get a commission or split of the money in these sorts of commercial arrangements.
First problem/conflict of interest that arises here is that ICGA is an association with members. It’s officers are also commercially minded with their own self-interest. If Nintendo contacted ICGA because of brand name of ICGA then payments would be expected to benefit the association/members rather than an individual “officer”. Compare/contrast with a sales/purchase request arriving at a commercial company. Does the company benefit, or does the employee who answers the call?
Contemporaneously, serendipitously, ICGA rehabilitates Reul.
Second problem/conflict of interest.
Time passes. Complaints about Reul/Loop/List rumble on in the background. ICGA delays and avoids over several years (ask Ed Schroeder for details).
Eventually ICGA asks Watkins to take a look.Watkins comes back with a preliminary report that Loop-List is similar to Fruit. Go look up the detail if you want. ICGA delays more (again ask Ed). ICGA asks Reul for a response. Reul is uncontactable (I believe). ICGA eventually state they are not going to investigate further but they are going to sanction Reul (with a ban I think) for not responding to them. Nice get out. Reul’s program published via ICGA/van den Herik, by Nintendo, is only ever subject to a preliminary enquiry, never to be finally completed, and with no “official” status of being any form of copy. Reul is only guilty of “not replying to ICGA”. Compare and contrast case Rybka.
I rather doubt Fabian Letouzey has ever or will ever benefit from the funds presumably transferred from Nintendo in relation to the Wii publishing deal.