Ryan Benitez wrote:Vempele wrote:George Bodkin wrote:I saw Toga 1.4.4, 1.4.7 1.5.5 and 1.5.7 on a site with Belka info on it.
Are these real Toga's.
Thanks George.
1.4 beta 4a seems perfectly legal (and real); the others break the GPL. The beta contains a shared hash parallel search and some other changes, all original code as far as I can see.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first open-source implementation of
Shared Hash.
Amy was also GPL.
Toga 1.4 beta 4a is by Thomas Gaksch, only available to Beta testers as yet, but it played in the German tournament in Thüringen where it was not very lucky, it got last. But results on Playchess with this MP version were very good. I understand from Teemu's words that he is not involved in this version, so his own version building on Zach's SMP work is another new Toga.
The Togas 1.4.4, 1.4.7 1.5.5 and 1.5.7 seen by George however are I suppose again the SE Special Edition versions that at least break the GPL by not having sources included.
I think they at least were not meant to go on a public site by the programmer but that still leaves the fact they should include the GPL license and sources, also for betatesting I think although I'm not 100% sure what the GPL says about that.
These versions are supposedly made by a Charles Formula who as far as I know has never posted here or in any of the German forums that I know. I don't know what is going on in the Russian forums. That name is about all I know of the programmer. I know of Ryan's claims that these versions are suspect as towards their improvements, they claim to have Search Focus, the original Search Focus is a Fruit development by Ryan. Ryan has told me he looked at the assembly code of the Toga SE versions. However I think Charles has a right to defend himself against these claims, I do not know how to reach him myself but maybe the person I got the SE versions from can ask him. The person I got the Betas from also would like the matter cleared, has said to me that Ryan should take a look at the program when there are claims of piracy and has always maintained the programmer should follow the GPL. He only learned from Ryan's claims very recently via me.
The name Charles Formula does not appear anywhere in the accompanying read.me and the Search Focus and Razoring introduced suddenly in these Togas are I think pretty advanced programming techniques, so for all we know there may be yet another programmer involved in making these versions. Or somebody else possibly was involved in disassembly of Fruit, that is another possibility.
Eelco