The Intellectual Property Oxymoron

[garybelton]

Never looked at your code before. I am a "put the curly brace on the next line" type of guy but once I got past that I could read it.

Any plans for OO? You could cut down the number of lines of code a lot. Also, with modern compilers is it still useful to use those bitwise operators >> and << in a chess program?

[bob]

As I said, we don't generally cite "ideas" unless I discuss something _new_ but know that the idea came from someone else. If Bruce came up with something, I would attribute it to him. An example is the older 2-level hashing used in Crafty, where I attributed it to Ken Thompson. He had to do it that way in Belle, loops were not practical when probing. I was unaware of anyone doing it that way previously, and wanted to make it clear it was not _my_ idea.

For people reading thru my source, I assume a certain level of chess literacy, it is not written for a non-programmer / non-chess-player to read like a novel...

[Don]

"Copying isn't theft, and it isn't piracy. It's what we did for millennia until the invention of copyright, and we can do it again, if we don't hobble ourselves with the antiquated remnants of a censorship system from the sixteenth century." — Karl Fogel

http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel/

"Bach, Shakespeare and Michelangelo didn't need copyright, we don't need copyright. Copyright infringement is a victim-less crime, nobody has a right to have a monopoly on ideas or information, you have a right to keep your ideas and information private, but if you make them public, they are not your private property anymore."

http://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/inte ... _property/

Interesting views that differ from those of Fischer, Danailov and the ICGA panel.

In principle, I agree with you. Copyright and patents (and this is just my personal opinion) are very bad ideas that have worked against the (more nobler) principles of capitalism and in favor of the worst side of capitalism. Also I honestly believe it works against innovation even though it's stated purpose is to "reward" it.

Nevertheless, I have to live in this world and respect the principles, laws and sensitivities that those around me live by, even if I don't agree with them. I will only violate that when there is a very clear higher principle involved. We cannot just pick and choose whatever suits us and not take into consideration anyone other than ourselves.

So this means, for example, that if someone steals your computer, you cannot break into their home and take it back, that is actually considered theft. I think this idea also applies to the Fruit/Rybka/Ippo stuff. The cloners have argued that "turnabout is fair play" which is really an offensive concept. In other words, Rybka stole from Fruit, therefore it's not wrong to steal from Rybka.

Because the law is screwed up (in my opinion) with respect to copyright, patents and our communal sense of what is fair and not due to this, we get the situation where we are confused when a program that was basically stolen is then made "open source." To me that is an indication that something is wrong with the laws themselves. It's sort of like a proof in mathematics or science, if you can produce logical inconsistencies, you probably have a problem. This does not quite rise to the same level as tight mathematical proofs, but I think a similar concept is involved. Any law that creates major complications and requires a huge body of supporting laws and clarifications to go with it is suspect. It seems wrong to me to be able to produce something of value so cheaply (by copying a CD) but by law it is illegal to do so. If I had a machine that could create "food" out of nothing and I could feed the poor, I'll bet it would be made illegal to use it. For sure, anyone standing to lose from my invention would campaign vigorously against it. The arguments would be that it encourages laziness, etc.

I think it's not very relevant what Karl Fogel or anyone else believes. Us humans have limited wisdom which is proved by the fact that the smartest people in the world have major disagreements on the most basic things. So I don't go by that. I also have my own feelings on the matter, but that is not relevant either.

But your assertion that this is a victimless crime is not correct. If I write a book (or a program) based on my conviction that I will get compensated for it and that it is protected by copyright law and this is violated, it's a crime and I'm a victim. It's not relevant whether having copyright laws really makes sense or not (or whether I think they do or not.)

I agree with you however in principle and I agree with what you say that ideas should not (by decree) be subject to "ownership." It's a misguided concept to me. However, since that is how society is structured, I am going to play by these rules - and I might even decide to "own" some ideas of my own.

[bob]

Never looked at your code before. I am a "put the curly brace on the next line" type of guy but once I got past that I could read it.

Any plans for OO? You could cut down the number of lines of code a lot. Also, with modern compilers is it still useful to use those bitwise operators >> and << in a chess program?

1. curly brace on a line by itself greatly lengthens the code (lengthens as in more lines of code, which strings things out vertically and consumes lines on a display but with no semantic content to speak of. Linus Torvalds has a policy of "one function == one page" which is where that came from. I use "indent" to clean it up from time to time, and have a script that tells it to "cuddle the braces."

2. no plans for OO.

3. << and >> are still significantly faster than using bit-fields, yes. Unfortunately. There are issues with sign-extension and such that the compiler has to deal with but I know when it can be ignored or not...