Crafty implications ...
Chris Whittington
This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status of Crafty.
Crafty source code is freely available.
Gnu source code is freely available.
Crafty differs from Gnu in that Gnu can be modified and worked on by
amateurs. The idea with Gnu is to pass back any improvements to the source
for publication. Good improvements get incorporated. The project doesn't
seem to be under the control of any one individual, rather it grows as a
collective effort, or that is the idea.
Crafty can be modified and worked on by amateurs. The idea with Crafty is to
pass back any improvements to the source for publication. Bob Hyatt decides
whether this happens. To all entents and purposes this means that Bob
controls the project. It grows, partly as collective effort, but Bob
maintains control over it.
Gnu has been taken and used as the starting point for some commercial
programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
This appears to be acceptable.
Crafty has been taken and used as the starting point for several amateur
programs. Presumably they don't intend commercial publication. Use of these
programs, in tournaments for example, or on the icc, has led to big
problems, both with Bob and with some other programmers.
What is the purpose of Crafty ?
Chris Whittington
Dann Corbit
news:920580258.9403.0...@news.demon.co.uk...
>
>
>This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status of Crafty.
>
>Crafty source code is freely available.
>
>Gnu source code is freely available.
>
>Crafty differs from Gnu in that Gnu can be modified and worked on by
>amateurs. The idea with Gnu is to pass back any improvements to the source
>for publication. Good improvements get incorporated. The project doesn't
>seem to be under the control of any one individual, rather it grows as a
>collective effort, or that is the idea.
>
>Crafty can be modified and worked on by amateurs. The idea with Crafty is
to
>pass back any improvements to the source for publication. Bob Hyatt decides
>whether this happens. To all entents and purposes this means that Bob
>controls the project. It grows, partly as collective effort, but Bob
>maintains control over it.
>
>Gnu has been taken and used as the starting point for some commercial
>programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
>This appears to be acceptable.
That is another important distinction. In either case, you cannot take the
code and claim it as your own. I don't know if there are *any* public
domain chess programs. Such a program could be used in any manner the
end-user sees fit, including the writing of their own program for which
*they* could claim copyright.
>Crafty has been taken and used as the starting point for several amateur
>programs. Presumably they don't intend commercial publication. Use of these
>programs, in tournaments for example, or on the icc, has led to big
>problems, both with Bob and with some other programmers.
>
>What is the purpose of Crafty ?
The intended purpose was (I think) to offer a relatively state of the art
computer chess playing program that people could examine at their leisure
and learn from. What has happened (unfortunately) is that some people have
grabbed the code, made a few tweaks, and slapped their name on it. This is
illegal and unintended. I suppose it is the same with any form of
information. You offer it, hoping that it will be used for the benefit of
others. Somewhere, someone will figure out an evil and twisted purpose and
apply it for that end.
--
C-FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
"The C-FAQ Book" ISBN 0-201-84519-9
C.A.P. Newsgroup http://www.dejanews.com/~c_a_p
C.A.P. FAQ: ftp://38.168.214.175/pub/Chess%20Analysis%20Project%20FAQ.htm
Robert Hyatt
: This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status of Crafty.
: Crafty source code is freely available.
: Gnu source code is freely available.
: Crafty differs from Gnu in that Gnu can be modified and worked on by
: amateurs. The idea with Gnu is to pass back any improvements to the source
: for publication. Good improvements get incorporated. The project doesn't
: seem to be under the control of any one individual, rather it grows as a
: collective effort, or that is the idea.
: Crafty can be modified and worked on by amateurs. The idea with Crafty is to
: pass back any improvements to the source for publication. Bob Hyatt decides
: whether this happens. To all entents and purposes this means that Bob
: controls the project. It grows, partly as collective effort, but Bob
: maintains control over it.
: Gnu has been taken and used as the starting point for some commercial
: programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
: This appears to be acceptable.
: Crafty has been taken and used as the starting point for several amateur
: programs. Presumably they don't intend commercial publication. Use of these
: programs, in tournaments for example, or on the icc, has led to big
: problems, both with Bob and with some other programmers.
: What is the purpose of Crafty ?
: Chris Whittington
It really has two purposes:
(1) make the actual source code to a 'working engine' available for
anyone to look at. This includes a tremendous 'history' document at the
front of main.c, that captures what a software engineer would call "the
essence of the total project" including successes, failures, and mixed
results. But the main point was to make something available that is
really 'reasonable'. If you compare the coding and comment style of
Crafty with GnuChess, you will see what I mean. I wrote this code to
be relatively easy to understand. The source is broken into reasonable
procedures, the procedures are collected into appropriate files, everything
has lots of 'prose' comments to make the code understandable. Gnu has none
of the above.
(2) To make "Crafty" a single project still, as I had expected that many would
become interested, and make suggestions, send in coding changes, and so forth,
that would benefit crafty as much as crafty had benefitted others. It was
always 'imagined' as a 'crafty' project. Not as a project that anyone could
come along and grab it and make a few lines of changes to it and then say "here
is a brand new program that is original, written by me." Yet this has happened
more or less, depending on the 'clone' we choose to talk about.
It is certainly a 'grey' area. But, as I have stated before, I had _never_
intended that "crafty" would be used in chess tournaments _unless_ it was
entered by me. Ideas? sure. Actual source code? No. Because that can
produce several things, all of them bad.
So the purpose was to disclose ideas, get feedback, but _not_ provide a
'quick, change me and I'm yours' sort of program. At least a couple of
folks didn't quite figure that out. (And the Bionic team was at least
honest about their 'roots' while others were _not_.)
It has certainly backfired in a way I didn't intend. It was not my intent
to see a second crafty in Jakarta. Nor to see one (or possibly more) in the
recent Dutch tournament. And in the case of the ICCA, I have certainly talked
to them at length so that this is not an issue for the upcoming WCCC/WMCCC
events.
But it is certainly a "mess". IMHO.
--
Robert Hyatt Computer and Information Sciences
hy...@cis.uab.edu University of Alabama at Birmingham
(205) 934-2213 115A Campbell Hall, UAB Station
(205) 934-5473 FAX Birmingham, AL 35294-1170
Natalia Glagoleva
1. Rotated bitmaps approach evolved and became well-known and popular.
2. EGTBs are now part of almost any new chess program (CSTal included).
3. Excellent SMP algorithm is now well documented, and over time it or its
derivates will be included in more programs.
4. More people now beleives that "big iron" programmers are good in
algorithms, too.
5. There is an excellent free chess program.
6. There is once againg free exchange of new ideas.
I think those results overweights problems with copying, but of course
I'm not commercial chess programmer...
Eugene
Robert Hyatt <hy...@crafty.cis.uab.edu> wrote in message
news:7bn4n6$3hg$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu...
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7bn4n6$3hg$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
Right. And please don't take this as a flame, but because you did what you
did, you created the mess. Which gives you the responsibility to clear it
up.
Maybe the analogy is not so good, but you threw sweeties out into the plaza
and then didn't like the consequences.
First Bob. Bob is a control-freak. He 'is' Crafty. Crafty source is out, but
Bob won't allow it to be used for its obvious use, namely fiddling with,
ripping off chunks of it, and recompiling it.
He will allow you to compile it straight. Call it DoctorSingaRoboHilde and
play it on icc with 'Crafty' in the finger notes.
He doesn't like it if you fiddle with it, compile it. Call it Voyager and
play it on icc without 'Crafty' in the finger notes.
He also doesn't like it if you fiddle with it, compile it, call it Gunda,
tell the world it is a Crafty derivative, and enter it into a tournament.
Suprisingly he doesn't even like Bruce offering him his end-game-table-bases
for free. He prefers to wait 18 months for Eugene to build some instead. I
always saw this as a straight 'control-of-Crafty' issue.
Multiple cats are out of the bag, and Bob wants a collar and chain on each
of them. He can't have it.
Maybe a better analogy is that Bob is a 'father' - Crafty clones are his
'children' (not Bruce's - see above), but they misbehave, so Bob admonishes
them all over rgcc. It's an interesting extension of the Ed Schroder reason
for calling his program 'Rebel' - it never does what it's told, and he has
to keep fixing one threat to collapse totally after another. Bob has taken
the chess programmer paradigm of a control freak setting up a rebellious and
unstable micro-world on his PC for wrestling with and keeping in order, to
the new high of setting up a rebellious, unstable macro-world in the
real-world for wrestling with so he can try and keep it under control.
Most of the chess programmers are just playing god within the micro-world of
their own PC's. Bob has gone for total world domination. The god of gods.
Obviously this is hubris and doomed to failure, but that's the idea, it's
the world-stage wrestling, and survival against all the odds, where the
kicks come from. The process will go on forever. There is no ending, no
conclusion. Well, heart-attack, maybe. The deal is the process.
Second is the other side to this. The cloners. Young men don't all want to
be the same, each looks for an angle, the best piece of steak, the best
woman. Most young men don't get it, they do 9-5, get bored, marry no
centre-fold and stay in the mass. Looking for the angle to be special and be
different. A few nutcases look to chessprogramming. It worked in the past
for a few people. Given the world population size, Bob is going to have his
work cut out with these few who see Crafty as their path to fame and
fortune. Their incentive to 'cheat' is very high.
So there you have it. A self-feeding micro-world, with Bob as god and a load
of young guys looking for their life-chances by pinching greater or fewer
bits of the Bob-bible. Bob shouts at his miscreants, and everyone else
enjoys the specacle or joins in.
The original title: "This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status
of Crafty".
Not really possible is it ? One needs to pin down the status of Bob. And his
'cloners'.
Bob Hyatt - This Is Your Life. And a frigging great mess it is too. What are
you going to do about it ?
Personally, I advise letting go.
Chris Whittington
Sean
Glad to see you are away from the bra-burner set.....they will corrupt your
male rutting pig morals......best to be in touch with our "inner pigs" !!
Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:920632386.25029.0...@news.demon.co.uk...
>Right. And please don't take this as a flame, but because you did what you
>did, you created the mess. Which gives you the responsibility to clear it
>up.
Hyatt's responsible for many messes and WILL NEVER accept responsibility for
ANYTHING !
>First Bob. Bob is a control-freak.
heehee we know that !
>He 'is' Crafty.
He is also an Android !
>Suprisingly he doesn't even like Bruce offering him his
end-game-table-bases
>for free. He prefers to wait 18 months for Eugene to build some instead. I
>always saw this as a straight 'control-of-Crafty' issue.
BTW:) who is Eugene ?? I thought Ken Thompson's endgame disks are all the
rage !
>Multiple cats are out of the bag, and Bob wants a collar and chain on each
>of them. He can't have it.
Dr. Bobo cannot have lots of things, but a controller type A personality
will continue to try no matter how bad it makes them feel....hence
compulsive obsessive thinking and feeling which Dr. Bobo displays
continuously !
>Most of the chess programmers are just playing god within the micro-world
of
>their own PC's. Bob has gone for total world domination. The god of gods.
ROTFL:) Philosophy Chris ?
>Bob Hyatt - This Is Your Life. And a frigging great mess it is too. What
are
>you going to do about it ?
IMO:) nada, no change, just attack and bully....sweeties and all !
>Personally, I advise letting go.
Letting go of what Chris ? Life, Love, Compulsive Obsessive thinking or
Crapty even ?
>Chris Whittington
Sean
Dusan Dobes
: This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status of Crafty.
: Crafty source code is freely available.
: Gnu source code is freely available.
: Crafty differs from Gnu in that Gnu can be modified and worked on by
: amateurs. The idea with Gnu is to pass back any improvements to the source
: for publication. Good improvements get incorporated. The project doesn't
: seem to be under the control of any one individual, rather it grows as a
: collective effort, or that is the idea.
: Crafty can be modified and worked on by amateurs. The idea with Crafty is to
: pass back any improvements to the source for publication. Bob Hyatt decides
: whether this happens. To all entents and purposes this means that Bob
: controls the project. It grows, partly as collective effort, but Bob
: maintains control over it.
: Gnu has been taken and used as the starting point for some commercial
: programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
: This appears to be acceptable.
It is not acceptable to use parts of GNU in a commercial program.
The code base for GNU is copyrighted by FSF (Free Software Foundation).
Sources can be modified and distributed under the terms of GPL
(General Public License). It is _not_ acceptable to take or modify
GNU sources and change the license. It violates the GPL. Gnuchess
and all it's clones should be distributed freely and with sources.
For details see http://www.opensource.org/gpl-license.html
You should _always_ check the licence conditions before
using/modifying/distributing sofware, right?
: Crafty has been taken and used as the starting point for several amateur
: programs. Presumably they don't intend commercial publication. Use of these
: programs, in tournaments for example, or on the icc, has led to big
: problems, both with Bob and with some other programmers.
: What is the purpose of Crafty ?
Dont know about the purpose, but Crafty license is not as clear
as the license of GNU. The licensing notice in main.c permits
using, distributing, and modifying, but it says nothing about
distributing modified Crafty. That means, you should ask the author
for permission before doing so. Bionic Impact is currently freely
distributed via Internet without permission. Voyager is not
distributed, but it is most probably 99% Crafty and someone other
than Robert Hyatt claims sole authorship. It is bad behaviour,
at least.
Dusan Dobes
: Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7bn4n6$3hg$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
This is wrong. I didn't convert to Bruce's format for two reasons: (1) it
would take a lot of work to re-index everything. And since he had not solved
the enpassant problem, the work to do that wasn't worthwhile, at the time.
(2) _I_ didn't write the code to probe Eugene's tablebases. He sent that
to me "ready to run". The advantages for simply replacing my old code (that
was written by Steven Edwards, btw) were (a) file sizes 1/2 the original,
(b) en passant problem fixed, (c) new generator was _much_ faster, making
it more useful since many more tablebases could be built.
But your 'conclusion' is wrong, because for SJE, then for Eugene's approach,
I didn't have to write anything. Both supplied everything that was needed.
I wouldn't expect Bruce to write code for Crafty, because I don't see where
it would be particularly useful for him.
It wasn't a 'control issue'. It was a 'time' issue, and nothing more.
: Multiple cats are out of the bag, and Bob wants a collar and chain on each
: of them. He can't have it.
: Maybe a better analogy is that Bob is a 'father' - Crafty clones are his
: 'children' (not Bruce's - see above), but they misbehave, so Bob admonishes
: them all over rgcc. It's an interesting extension of the Ed Schroder reason
: for calling his program 'Rebel' - it never does what it's told, and he has
: to keep fixing one threat to collapse totally after another. Bob has taken
: the chess programmer paradigm of a control freak setting up a rebellious and
: unstable micro-world on his PC for wrestling with and keeping in order, to
: the new high of setting up a rebellious, unstable macro-world in the
: real-world for wrestling with so he can try and keep it under control.
: Most of the chess programmers are just playing god within the micro-world of
: their own PC's. Bob has gone for total world domination. The god of gods.
Bad perception of the truth. The only issue I see at present is that it is
too easy to take crafty, modify two lines, and then enter the result in a
chess tournament and have a significant advantage over 99% of the competition
when that program can use hardware _much_ faster than the others (SMP). Or
even without SMP, someone can take Crafty, modify it, and give people that are
writing their own program from scratch a lot of difficulties and discouragement.
: Obviously this is hubris and doomed to failure, but that's the idea, it's
: the world-stage wrestling, and survival against all the odds, where the
: kicks come from. The process will go on forever. There is no ending, no
: conclusion. Well, heart-attack, maybe. The deal is the process.
: Second is the other side to this. The cloners. Young men don't all want to
: be the same, each looks for an angle, the best piece of steak, the best
: woman. Most young men don't get it, they do 9-5, get bored, marry no
: centre-fold and stay in the mass. Looking for the angle to be special and be
: different. A few nutcases look to chessprogramming. It worked in the past
: for a few people. Given the world population size, Bob is going to have his
: work cut out with these few who see Crafty as their path to fame and
: fortune. Their incentive to 'cheat' is very high.
: So there you have it. A self-feeding micro-world, with Bob as god and a load
: of young guys looking for their life-chances by pinching greater or fewer
: bits of the Bob-bible. Bob shouts at his miscreants, and everyone else
: enjoys the specacle or joins in.
: The original title: "This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status
: of Crafty".
: Not really possible is it ? One needs to pin down the status of Bob. And his
: 'cloners'.
: Bob Hyatt - This Is Your Life. And a frigging great mess it is too. What are
: you going to do about it ?
: Personally, I advise letting go.
: Chris Whittington
I disagree. This turns into someone copying the Linux source, then selling
it as their own product. Or giving it away as their own product. Or just
calling it their own product. It doesn't wash.
There is plenty of precedence for releasing the source. Can you spell
"GnuChess"? or Sargon? Or Coko? or Chess 4.x? Or Cray Blitz? or Chess 1.0?
all of those were available in source code form at some point in time. I don't
know of _any_ of them ending up in computer chess competitions under a new name
however.
I think the problem is a different issue. If you have 1,000 people looking
at such source, the probability of a 'bad apple' is very low. If you have
1,000,000 people looking, the probability is 1,000 times higher. I think
it is a 'numbers game' rather than anything else. The only difference between
'me' and 'you' is that you sell your program without source, and I can guarantee
you lots of people 'steal' it. But only to play against. I give mine away
with the source, which makes it easier to change, so that it can be
Bad perception of the truth. The only issue I see at present is that it is
too easy to take crafty, modify two lines, and then enter the result in a
chess tournament and have a significant advantage over 99% of the competition
when that program can use hardware _much_ faster than the others (SMP). Or
even without SMP, someone can take Crafty, modify it, and give people that are
writing their own program from scratch a lot of difficulties and discouragement.
IE the difference between this condition for you and I is that you sell your
program with no source. And you _know_ it gets stolen many times as people
copy it. But it is unlikely they would 'use it' in a competition because it
would be very difficult to change it enough to 'pass muster'. I give the
source away, which does make this easy to do (or so they think).
I certainly accept responsibility for creating the circumstances for this
to be possible. But I don't accept the responsibility for those with moral
standards to low that this seems to be acceptable.
If this was about 'control' I would never have released the source in the
first place.
Dann Corbit
I guess we should sue the "Stanley" corporation. Or better yet, those
persons with all those tempting windows for causing the miscreants to go
astray should be sued. How dare they lure those poor unsuspecting lads into
deviant behavior.
Dr. Hyatt has not asked for anything that is not fully within his legal
rights.
Perhaps it was a bit naive to imagine that even among such an intellectual
group as computer programmers there would be those without a shred of honor
or dignity. Perhaps the end of a golden age is drawing to a close. In the
1960's and 1970's people used to publish algorithms to the ACM just for the
sheer joy of discovering them. Sharing information was a way of life.
Hiding information retards progress. But with all the misuse and abuse
perhaps people will have to start hiding things now. That's quite sad
really. In more ways than one.
j...@yktvmv.watson.ibm.com
on Thu, 4 Mar 1999 20:40:09 -0000,
"Chris Whittington" <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> writes:
>Gnu has been taken and used as the starting point for some commercial
>programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
>This appears to be acceptable.
This would be contrary to the gnu license. Any derived work
(in the sense of copyright law) can not be sold (or distributed without
the source). I do not know who would be responsible for enforcing the
license or why they may not have tried to do so in some particular
case.
James B. Shearer
Chris Whittington
Dusan Dobes wrote in message ...
>Chris Whittington (ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>
>
>: This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status of Crafty.
>
>: Crafty source code is freely available.
>
>: Gnu source code is freely available.
>
>: Crafty differs from Gnu in that Gnu can be modified and worked on by
>: amateurs. The idea with Gnu is to pass back any improvements to the
source
>: for publication. Good improvements get incorporated. The project doesn't
>: seem to be under the control of any one individual, rather it grows as a
>: collective effort, or that is the idea.
>
>: Crafty can be modified and worked on by amateurs. The idea with Crafty is
to
>: pass back any improvements to the source for publication. Bob Hyatt
decides
>: whether this happens. To all entents and purposes this means that Bob
>: controls the project. It grows, partly as collective effort, but Bob
>: maintains control over it.
>
>: programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
>: This appears to be acceptable.
>
True. 'Acceptable' is the wrong word.
However, Gnu Chess *is* the basis of, I think, two commercial programs at
least. It was also, allegedly, the whole engine basis of 'Chess Wars'
released last year. This impacted on my business, since we were tendering to
supply the chess engine for that product. Only to be told that our very low
price was 'too high'. Perhaps we should have offered it at $0, since that
appeared to be the price of Gnu Chess, for all that ever got done about it
by the Free Software Foundation.
Nevertheless, most 'insiders' know that Gnu Chess was the start point of two
(at least) commercial programs. These 'insiders' assume that the divergence
from Gnu Chess is now very large, and the programs concerned are 'accepted'
as belonging to their current authors.
Whether you like it or not, this is a kind of precedent, no ?
>
>The code base for GNU is copyrighted by FSF (Free Software Foundation).
>Sources can be modified and distributed under the terms of GPL
>(General Public License). It is _not_ acceptable to take or modify
>GNU sources and change the license. It violates the GPL. Gnuchess
>and all it's clones should be distributed freely and with sources.
>For details see http://www.opensource.org/gpl-license.html
>
>You should _always_ check the licence conditions before
>using/modifying/distributing sofware, right?
Right. But, there is also the question of asserting these rights. Gnu is
fatally compromised now by the failure to assert rights after Bruce's
evidence last year over the Chess Wars product.
There are places and people with whom rights can't be asserted. Suppose
People's Republic of China company duplicates, for sale, 100,000 Craftys.
How is Bob going to deal with that ? Suppose North Korean company wraps up
Crafty (with mods) in a GUI and starts licencing it to publishers. How is
Bob going to take any action to stop it.
Suppose some guy in Russia starts selling GUI-fied Crafty clones for
download from his website at $15 a time. How will Bob stop that ?
Bob has effectively given anyone, operating from a country with no effective
civil legal system, a licence to make money at his expense.
>
>: Crafty has been taken and used as the starting point for several amateur
>: programs. Presumably they don't intend commercial publication. Use of
these
>: programs, in tournaments for example, or on the icc, has led to big
>: problems, both with Bob and with some other programmers.
>
>: What is the purpose of Crafty ?
>
>Dont know about the purpose, but Crafty license is not as clear
>as the license of GNU. The licensing notice in main.c permits
>using, distributing, and modifying, but it says nothing about
>distributing modified Crafty. That means, you should ask the author
>for permission before doing so. Bionic Impact is currently freely
>distributed via Internet without permission. Voyager is not
>distributed, but it is most probably 99% Crafty and someone other
>than Robert Hyatt claims sole authorship. It is bad behaviour,
>at least.
Sure. And entirely predictable. Worse, the computer chess community is now
running around in a great panic about Crafty clones at the WCCC in June.
Special new rules are being invented. Newcomers will find themselves under
suspicion. There may be demands to see source code, or test your program out
for Crafty 'similarities'. There will be gossip and cliques. I don't think
it is going to be an atmosphere of friendly sportsmanship. Plus ca change.
Bob let the cat out of bag, and it's not going back in again.
I donlt know either the Voyager or Bionic Impakt people, but I do know that
it is very tempting for young programmers to imagine they can 'improve' on
Crafty and develop a program themselves. Perhaps they intend to slowly
modify more and more of Crafty until it is kind-of their's. Then perhaps
they intend to make it commercial. Similar to what I assumed has happened
with Gnu Chess.
I find this slow variation to a new product legally and morally acceptable.
They would have been helped by Bob's ideas, they would use his system as a
test-bed and save themselves much time and grief. And at the end, they'ld
have a valid commercial product.
So, for me, if the end-result is acceptable, the intermediate stages must be
too, just so long as they don't make commercial exploitation until they get
to the end. I don't see why they should be banned from tournaments (they
are), or subjected to attack by newsgroup (they are).
In essence, it seems to me, that the entire copyleft process, Bob's source
code releases and so on are naive mechanisms, the kind of utopian ideas
developed by immature students. Faced with the real world and its villains,
Bob and Gnu just look foolish. And the mess created impacts on the rest of
us.
I think Bob should just allow independent development of Crafty, try and get
any developers to police themselves by extending his family support group
system to include them, and be pleased if they come up with something
stronger. Meanwhile the rest of the programmers should accept that the
solution of force of control measures needed to police away Crafty
derivatives that deny their origin are likely to be worse than the original
problem.
Chris Whittington
>
>Dusan Dobes
>
>: Chris Whittington
>
Dann Corbit
[snip]
>>It is not acceptable to use parts of GNU in a commercial program.
>
>True. 'Acceptable' is the wrong word.
>
>However, Gnu Chess *is* the basis of, I think, two commercial programs at
>least. It was also, allegedly, the whole engine basis of 'Chess Wars'
>released last year. This impacted on my business, since we were tendering
to
>supply the chess engine for that product. Only to be told that our very low
>price was 'too high'. Perhaps we should have offered it at $0, since that
>appeared to be the price of Gnu Chess, for all that ever got done about it
>by the Free Software Foundation.
>
>Nevertheless, most 'insiders' know that Gnu Chess was the start point of
two
>(at least) commercial programs. These 'insiders' assume that the divergence
>from Gnu Chess is now very large, and the programs concerned are 'accepted'
>as belonging to their current authors.
>
>Whether you like it or not, this is a kind of precedent, no ?
precedent? Pirate software production.
>>
>>The code base for GNU is copyrighted by FSF (Free Software Foundation).
>>Sources can be modified and distributed under the terms of GPL
>>(General Public License). It is _not_ acceptable to take or modify
>>GNU sources and change the license. It violates the GPL. Gnuchess
>>and all it's clones should be distributed freely and with sources.
>>For details see http://www.opensource.org/gpl-license.html
>>
>>You should _always_ check the licence conditions before
>>using/modifying/distributing sofware, right?
>
>Right. But, there is also the question of asserting these rights. Gnu is
>fatally compromised now by the failure to assert rights after Bruce's
>evidence last year over the Chess Wars product.
>
>There are places and people with whom rights can't be asserted. Suppose
>People's Republic of China company duplicates, for sale, 100,000 Craftys.
>How is Bob going to deal with that ? Suppose North Korean company wraps up
>Crafty (with mods) in a GUI and starts licencing it to publishers. How is
>Bob going to take any action to stop it.
>
>Suppose some guy in Russia starts selling GUI-fied Crafty clones for
>download from his website at $15 a time. How will Bob stop that ?
>
>Bob has effectively given anyone, operating from a country with no
effective
>civil legal system, a licence to make money at his expense.
You have given out the same licence for abuse, by your standards. If
someone in China grabs a CS-TAL CD and makes 1 million copies, selling them
for $15.00 are you a guilty criminal or are they? There is no difference in
the two crimes. The impact on the victim may be greater in one case or the
other. But the law breaking is the same.
Whatever he chooses to do is his choice. Again, he has not engaged in any
wrongdoing. I think a better answer is to disgrace the cheaters. And if
you have a legitimate, non-commercial program, why would you be afraid to
show your source code to an independent panel of judges?
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7boqqs$jkm$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
Hmmm. Slight side-issue, but ....
Bruce offered you, publicly his egtb stuff.
About a year later he asked, on this ng, I think, why you never took up his
offer. Or he expressed surprise, or something. No doubt it's in Dejas.
This implies to me, at least, that you never even spoke to him about the
original offer. Or ?
Anyway, your business, not mine.
>(2) _I_ didn't write the code to probe Eugene's tablebases. He sent that
>to me "ready to run". The advantages for simply replacing my old code
(that
>was written by Steven Edwards, btw) were (a) file sizes 1/2 the original,
>(b) en passant problem fixed, (c) new generator was _much_ faster, making
>it more useful since many more tablebases could be built.
>
>But your 'conclusion' is wrong, because for SJE, then for Eugene's
approach,
>I didn't have to write anything. Both supplied everything that was needed.
>I wouldn't expect Bruce to write code for Crafty, because I don't see where
>it would be particularly useful for him.
>
>It wasn't a 'control issue'. It was a 'time' issue, and nothing more.
Maybe. I don't really have enough data to argue with you. Intuition that it
doesn't gell isn't enough.
>
>: Multiple cats are out of the bag, and Bob wants a collar and chain on
each
>: of them. He can't have it.
>
>: Maybe a better analogy is that Bob is a 'father' - Crafty clones are his
>: 'children' (not Bruce's - see above), but they misbehave, so Bob
admonishes
>: them all over rgcc. It's an interesting extension of the Ed Schroder
reason
>: for calling his program 'Rebel' - it never does what it's told, and he
has
>: to keep fixing one threat to collapse totally after another. Bob has
taken
>: the chess programmer paradigm of a control freak setting up a rebellious
and
>: unstable micro-world on his PC for wrestling with and keeping in order,
to
>: the new high of setting up a rebellious, unstable macro-world in the
>: real-world for wrestling with so he can try and keep it under control.
>
>: Most of the chess programmers are just playing god within the micro-world
of
>: their own PC's. Bob has gone for total world domination. The god of gods.
>
>Bad perception of the truth.
Shame on you :)
It was a great analysis. Bob seeking the new high of trying to control the
world, just as if it were a complex program like Crafty, always Rebelling
against him. See - Ed understood you :)
But I see later you don't understand what I meant. Shame.
> The only issue I see at present is that it is
>too easy to take crafty, modify two lines, and then enter the result in a
>chess tournament and have a significant advantage over 99% of the
competition
>when that program can use hardware _much_ faster than the others (SMP). Or
>even without SMP, someone can take Crafty, modify it, and give people that
are
>writing their own program from scratch a lot of difficulties and
discouragement.
>
What ? More difficulties and discouragement than Crafty gives them already ?
How that ?
You're really bothered about 'people writing their own program getting a lot
of difficulty and discouragement'? Foolish me, I hadn't noticed your
concern. I'll pass on your empathies to all the other programmers too.
I don't know about Linux. Not my area. But I do know the policing measures
being taken to 'deal with' Crafty clones. The level of suspicion, the
opportunity for the usual suspects to start up their character
assassinations against new people, the level of gossip, the distortions
having to be made to the WCCC rules especially to accomodate your problem.
>
>There is plenty of precedence for releasing the source. Can you spell
When I read your 'can you spell' I release the safety catch on my revolver
.......
>"GnuChess"? or Sargon? Or Coko? or Chess 4.x? Or Cray Blitz? or Chess
1.0?
>
>all of those were available in source code form at some point in time. I
don't
>know of _any_ of them ending up in computer chess competitions under a new
name
>however.
I do. I know commercial programs based on them.
>
>I think the problem is a different issue. If you have 1,000 people looking
>at such source, the probability of a 'bad apple' is very low. If you have
>1,000,000 people looking, the probability is 1,000 times higher. I think
>it is a 'numbers game' rather than anything else. The only difference
between
>'me' and 'you' is that you sell your program without source, and I can
guarantee
>you lots of people 'steal' it. But only to play against. I give mine away
>with the source, which makes it easier to change, so that it can be
You got block-copy disease here, methinks ...
Makes no sense below ....
>Bad perception of the truth. The only issue I see at present is that it is
>too easy to take crafty, modify two lines, and then enter the result in a
>chess tournament and have a significant advantage over 99% of the
competition
>when that program can use hardware _much_ faster than the others (SMP). Or
>even without SMP, someone can take Crafty, modify it, and give people that
are
>writing their own program from scratch a lot of difficulties and
discouragement.
>
>IE the difference between this condition for you and I is that you sell
your
>program with no source. And you _know_ it gets stolen many times as people
>copy it. But it is unlikely they would 'use it' in a competition because
it
>would be very difficult to change it enough to 'pass muster'. I give the
>source away, which does make this easy to do (or so they think).
It makes it very easy. Also copying mine would be tricky if they wanted to
make further development. It wouldn't be commercially sensible. Copying
yours is very sensible, particularly for someone operating out of a
no-civil-law society - China, Russia, Korea, etc. etc. etc. oh, yes,
Indonesia, too.
>
>I certainly accept responsibility for creating the circumstances for this
>to be possible. But I don't accept the responsibility for those with moral
>standards to low that this seems to be acceptable.
Well I'll just leave a few Kalashnikovs lying around, and then disclaim
responsibility for the resulting shootings. Come on, Bob, it was *very*
predictable what was going to happen just as soon as Crafty got near the top
programs.
>
>If this was about 'control' I would never have released the source in the
>first place.
>
Why did you release the source ?
When I release my program, it's partly for the same fun reasons as anyone,
you too. But I also get some fame, some money, whatever. You get fame, right
? It helps your career, right ?
But you didn't understand the idea of 'control'. That's kind of sad.
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington
Dann Corbit wrote in message <7bp33o$19o$1...@client2.news.psi.net>...
>Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:920650724.11079.0...@news.demon.co.uk...
>[snip]
>>>It is not acceptable to use parts of GNU in a commercial program.
>>
>>True. 'Acceptable' is the wrong word.
>>
>>However, Gnu Chess *is* the basis of, I think, two commercial programs at
>>least. It was also, allegedly, the whole engine basis of 'Chess Wars'
>>released last year. This impacted on my business, since we were tendering
>to
>>supply the chess engine for that product. Only to be told that our very
low
>>price was 'too high'. Perhaps we should have offered it at $0, since that
>>appeared to be the price of Gnu Chess, for all that ever got done about it
>>by the Free Software Foundation.
>>
>>Nevertheless, most 'insiders' know that Gnu Chess was the start point of
>two
>>(at least) commercial programs. These 'insiders' assume that the
divergence
>>from Gnu Chess is now very large, and the programs concerned are
'accepted'
>>as belonging to their current authors.
>>
>>Whether you like it or not, this is a kind of precedent, no ?
>No. Those people are breaking the law. Perhaps that is what you mean by a
>precedent? Pirate software production.
Ok, scenario for you.
Some guy takes the Gnu or the Crafty program and starts fiddling around with
it, gets it to compile, plays chess against it.
Reckons he can do better, mods some stuff, reckons the results are good.
Mods more of it.
Mods more of it.
Adds new functions.
Rewrites sections.
Rewrites more sections.
Add more new functions.
Eventually rewrites everything.
1. Is the end result 'legal' ?
2. Can he commercially exploit the end result ?
3. Are any of the intermediate results 'legal' ?
4. Can he commercially exploit any of them ?
5. Can he test any intermediate out on icc ?
6. Can he enter any intermediate into a tournament ?
7. At which point does he need to credit the original author, and at which
point can he stop crediting ?
Messy ?
Chris Whittington
Hum Drum
But how would YOU stop it with your commerical license? Bob's no worse off
than you when it comes to a country that does not enforce copyright laws.
Hum Drum
> Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:920650724.11079.0...@news.demon.co.uk...
> [snip]
> >>It is not acceptable to use parts of GNU in a commercial program.
> >
> >True. 'Acceptable' is the wrong word.
> >
> >However, Gnu Chess *is* the basis of, I think, two commercial programs at
> >least. It was also, allegedly, the whole engine basis of 'Chess Wars'
> >released last year. This impacted on my business, since we were tendering
> to
> >supply the chess engine for that product. Only to be told that our very low
> >price was 'too high'. Perhaps we should have offered it at $0, since that
> >appeared to be the price of Gnu Chess, for all that ever got done about it
> >by the Free Software Foundation.
> >
> >Nevertheless, most 'insiders' know that Gnu Chess was the start point of
> two
> >(at least) commercial programs. These 'insiders' assume that the divergence
> >from Gnu Chess is now very large, and the programs concerned are 'accepted'
> >as belonging to their current authors.
> >
> >Whether you like it or not, this is a kind of precedent, no ?
> No. Those people are breaking the law. Perhaps that is what you mean by a
> precedent? Pirate software production.
No, I think he means that when you rest on your laurels too long, you WAIVE
your rights.
Hum Drum
Check into the US legal doctrine of "abstact - filtration - comparison" .
His innovations are copyrightable. Any unique code chunks left over from the
previous author are still that previous author's work - and the copyright holds
for that code chunk. So, he must comply with that code chunk's copyright.
Hum Drum
This CW character doesn't understand the concept of open source. I suggest he
read up on it. Apparently he thinks crafty and gnu chess "unfairly" compete
with his product by being free. Schade.
bruce moreland
<dco...@solutionsiq.com> wrote:
>"Blaming the victim" Miscreants pick up a hammer and smash windows with it.
>I guess we should sue the "Stanley" corporation. Or better yet, those
>persons with all those tempting windows for causing the miscreants to go
>astray should be sued. How dare they lure those poor unsuspecting lads into
>deviant behavior.
>
>Dr. Hyatt has not asked for anything that is not fully within his legal
>rights.
>
>Perhaps it was a bit naive to imagine that even among such an intellectual
>group as computer programmers there would be those without a shred of honor
>or dignity. Perhaps the end of a golden age is drawing to a close. In the
>1960's and 1970's people used to publish algorithms to the ACM just for the
>sheer joy of discovering them. Sharing information was a way of life.
>
>Hiding information retards progress. But with all the misuse and abuse
>perhaps people will have to start hiding things now. That's quite sad
>really. In more ways than one.
People have been doing funky stuff in computer chess tournaments
forever.
bruce
bruce moreland
<dco...@solutionsiq.com> wrote:
>The code base for GNU is copyleft. The code base for Crafty is copyright.
>That is another important distinction. In either case, you cannot take the
>code and claim it as your own. I don't know if there are *any* public
>domain chess programs. Such a program could be used in any manner the
>end-user sees fit, including the writing of their own program for which
>*they* could claim copyright.
There is another aspect, which is definition of authorship for
purposes of entering an ICCA event.
An individual author is allowed to have only one program in an event,
and even if someone gives you the legal right to do whatever you want
with the program, they are still the author of it, at least up until
some hard to define point at which their authorship is deemed to be
insignificant in comparison with yours.
bruce
bruce moreland
<ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Right. And please don't take this as a flame, but because you did what you
>did, you created the mess. Which gives you the responsibility to clear it
>up.
>
>Maybe the analogy is not so good, but you threw sweeties out into the plaza
>and then didn't like the consequences.
>
>
>
>First Bob. Bob is a control-freak. He 'is' Crafty. Crafty source is out, but
>Bob won't allow it to be used for its obvious use, namely fiddling with,
>ripping off chunks of it, and recompiling it.
>
>He will allow you to compile it straight. Call it DoctorSingaRoboHilde and
>play it on icc with 'Crafty' in the finger notes.
People download the exe, I don't think many of them compile it.
>He doesn't like it if you fiddle with it, compile it. Call it Voyager and
>play it on icc without 'Crafty' in the finger notes.
>
>He also doesn't like it if you fiddle with it, compile it, call it Gunda,
>tell the world it is a Crafty derivative, and enter it into a tournament.
If I were to do this, I would call it whatever, derived from Crafty,
or just call it Crafty, as modified by me, which is what people such
as Mike Byrne have been doing for years.
If Bob has a problem with anyone making modifications to Crafty, it is
news to me.
Furthermore, making modifications and running it on ICC would probably
be considered one of the things that it is *for*. You can run
whatever you want on there, that's what the place is for.
>Suprisingly he doesn't even like Bruce offering him his end-game-table-bases
>for free. He prefers to wait 18 months for Eugene to build some instead. I
>always saw this as a straight 'control-of-Crafty' issue.
He already had Steven J Edwards table stuff and some other stuff if I
remember right. Mine had minimal benefits, and I didn't offer to do
the integration work for him.
I talk to Bob every few weeks on the phone. We tend to pass
information that way rather than in source code form. He's given me
stuff and vice versa, and we've both benefited.
bruce
Jeremiah Penery
<snip all>
Please do not quote 300+ lines of text just to add a 3 line reply. It
is bad 'netiquette'.
Thanks.
Jeremiah
bruce moreland
<ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Right. But, there is also the question of asserting these rights. Gnu is
>fatally compromised now by the failure to assert rights after Bruce's
>evidence last year over the Chess Wars product.
Do you have more information about this that I don't have? I reported
this to the FSF, and through them I am pretty sure that John Stanback
was alerted. I don't know what was done about this after that,
perhaps rights were asserted. For all I know, Stanback got a royalty
or damages.
bruce
bruce moreland
<ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Ok, scenario for you.
>
>Some guy takes the Gnu or the Crafty program and starts fiddling around with
>it, gets it to compile, plays chess against it.
>
>Reckons he can do better, mods some stuff, reckons the results are good.
>
>Mods more of it.
>
>Mods more of it.
>
>Adds new functions.
>
>Rewrites sections.
>
>Rewrites more sections.
>
>Add more new functions.
>
>Eventually rewrites everything.
>
>1. Is the end result 'legal' ?
>
>2. Can he commercially exploit the end result ?
>
>3. Are any of the intermediate results 'legal' ?
>
>4. Can he commercially exploit any of them ?
Continuum issue, very difficult to answer without arbitrariness, and
apt to result in extreme controversy.
>5. Can he test any intermediate out on icc ?
I would think he'd be encouraged to. I don't know where you got the
idea that people were prevented from doing this.
>6. Can he enter any intermediate into a tournament ?
>
>7. At which point does he need to credit the original author, and at which
>point can he stop crediting ?
>
>Messy ?
Beyond a doubt.
I doubt any of the Crafty clones have subsumed the underlying Crafty
yet. There is a lot there. It is much larger than GnuChess, and has
a lot more stuff in it.
I can much more easily imagine that someone could completely subsume
GnuChess by now, but as to the legalities, etc., of that, I don't know
how that all works out.
bruce
Dann Corbit
news:36E02699...@noahark.net...
[snip]
>> >Whether you like it or not, this is a kind of precedent, no ?
>> No. Those people are breaking the law. Perhaps that is what you mean by
a
>> precedent? Pirate software production.
>
>No, I think he means that when you rest on your laurels too long, you WAIVE
>your rights.
According to what legal standard do you presume to make this remark? You
waive your rights when you waive them, and not before. Posting a source
code document in no way diminishes your legal rights. The copyright holder
retains copyright for what he/she has written.
It seems to be some popular sentiment that since thievery is so rampant,
people should just assume that it is OK to steal. Hardly a new idea, but
not one worthy of serious consideration.
Chris Whittington
bruce moreland wrote in message <36e83c1e....@news.seanet.com>...
>On Fri, 5 Mar 1999 16:14:35 -0000, "Chris Whittington"
><ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Right. But, there is also the question of asserting these rights. Gnu is
>>fatally compromised now by the failure to assert rights after Bruce's
>>evidence last year over the Chess Wars product.
>
>this to the FSF, and through them I am pretty sure that John Stanback
>was alerted. I don't know what was done about this after that,
>perhaps rights were asserted. For all I know, Stanback got a royalty
>or damages.
All I know is what was written here.
I recollect someone posting that FSF were not going to act. Last year
sometime.
Maybe events turned out different, or my recollection is random .... ?
Dunno - if there had been a legal case, wouldn't it have become commin
knowledge ?
Chris Whittington
>
>bruce
>
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7boqqs$jkm$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
We spoke about his stuff a couple of times. First problem I had was that
the probe code for Ferret had some non-ansi problems that MSVC was happy
with but my linux compiler was not. That's all that happened. I didn't
have/take time to fix something that was, at the time, not really broken
(SJE's tablebases worked fine, I had no disk space for more at the time,
so it was all 'moot' to me (don't fix what isn't broken, for example.)
Later, Eugene sent the generate program, the probe code, the code to
insert into Crafty to probe his databases, and I simply plugged it in
and tweaked around with the 'mate' score to make it match what I expected.
It took very little time, which is what this was all about. Bruce's file
format is probably fairly close to Eugene's in efficiency. His 'build' speed
was also reasonably close. So the only issue was 'my time' which is what this
was all about...
I wouldn't expect Bruce to write code for Crafty. He has his own program to
worry with.
: Anyway, your business, not mine.
:>(2) _I_ didn't write the code to probe Eugene's tablebases. He sent that
:>to me "ready to run". The advantages for simply replacing my old code
: (that
:>was written by Steven Edwards, btw) were (a) file sizes 1/2 the original,
:>(b) en passant problem fixed, (c) new generator was _much_ faster, making
:>it more useful since many more tablebases could be built.
:>
:>But your 'conclusion' is wrong, because for SJE, then for Eugene's
: approach,
:>I didn't have to write anything. Both supplied everything that was needed.
:>I wouldn't expect Bruce to write code for Crafty, because I don't see where
:>it would be particularly useful for him.
:>
:>It wasn't a 'control issue'. It was a 'time' issue, and nothing more.
: Maybe. I don't really have enough data to argue with you. Intuition that it
: doesn't gell isn't enough.
Don't see what else would explain this. I have no more 'control' over Eugene's
stuff than I would have had over Bruce's. I didn't write his code. I didn't
tell him what to do. It _still_ has his "name" on the source... so whether the
author was Edwards, Moreland or Nalimov really didn't matter since I didn't do
_any_ of those myself. SJE did the original port for Crafty, which is how that
originally got into my program anyway.. he emailed me the code and said if you
want to probe the databases in your search, use this code and it is working
fine. I did and it was. Eugene did the same thing last year with his databases.
simple story, really...
If you write one that is more compact, or more efficient, and send it to me, I'll
be more than happy to include that version instead...
:>
:>: Multiple cats are out of the bag, and Bob wants a collar and chain on
: Shame on you :)
I don't understand the concept 'control the world'. I do understand the
concept 'control _my_ code' however... and I fail to see how you leap from
the latter concept to the former statement...???
: But I see later you don't understand what I meant. Shame.
:> The only issue I see at present is that it is
:>too easy to take crafty, modify two lines, and then enter the result in a
:>chess tournament and have a significant advantage over 99% of the
: competition
:>when that program can use hardware _much_ faster than the others (SMP). Or
:>even without SMP, someone can take Crafty, modify it, and give people that
: are
:>writing their own program from scratch a lot of difficulties and
: discouragement.
:>
: What ? More difficulties and discouragement than Crafty gives them already ?
: How that ?
Easy... When I started in computer chess, and went to my first computer chess
event, I played several other programs. All from people that were pretty new
at this, just like I was. There was no "cadre" of chess 4.x clones that would
wipe everyone out and finish collectively at the front of the pack. So while I
might lose to chess 4.x, I might beat some other program, and in general, be
encouraged.
However a newcomer is going to have a real problem beating Crafty, for
several reasons. It is 4 years old and fairly 'mature'. It has been modified
a lot over those 4 years and plays fairly strong chess. It can use a parallel
machine (that is fairly inexpensive today) to get a signficant speed advantage.
And, in simple terms, is a big obstacle for a beginner to get past. If he goes
to a tournament and loses to "Crafty" that doesn't seem too bad since crafty is
known. But if he goes to a tournament and gets beat by _everybody_ he is going
to likely be very discouraged. And if he gets beat by everybody, because they
are really running disguised crafty programs, that would be bad, IMHO.
that is the issue here I am unhappy with. _I_ don't mind competing with
modified crafty clones at all. But I don't believe that they should be used
in computer chess events, since there has _always_ been a rule about duplicates.
: You're really bothered about 'people writing their own program getting a lot
: of difficulty and discouragement'? Foolish me, I hadn't noticed your
: concern. I'll pass on your empathies to all the other programmers too.
Not sure what you mean. The above is my concern. Stated simply and concisely.
In Jakarta I took issue with Gunda-1, because I thought that effectively gave
me two chances to do well. Both finished near the top, to make the point. One
of them displaced someone that would have finished higher.
I'm not worried one bit about "all the other programmers" as I have said before.
I am more concerned with "all the _new_ programmers". Old programmers can defend
themselves against Crafty just fine, although the SMP search offers certain
obstacles to even them. But that wasn't the issue.
Computer chess is about 'creativity'... not about 'copying'...
:>
:>: Obviously this is hubris and doomed to failure, but that's the idea, it's
They didn't have to make up a 'specific rule to accomodate my problem'. The
ICCA has _always_ had a specific rule to handle that. If you look at the
past tournament rules for ACM/WCCC events, source code was _required_ by the
rules. So that in the case of such 'suspicions' the TD (or a committee he
might put together) can examine the source code for a suspected 'copy' to see
if the program is legitimate or not. I have carried source listings to _every_
ACM tournament I have ever played in for this very reason. I don't know of any
cases where a case of suspected cheating occurred, but it does seem to me that
at an old WMCCC event something came up like that...
:>
:>There is plenty of precedence for releasing the source. Can you spell
: When I read your 'can you spell' I release the safety catch on my revolver
: .......
:>"GnuChess"? or Sargon? Or Coko? or Chess 4.x? Or Cray Blitz? or Chess
: 1.0?
:>
:>all of those were available in source code form at some point in time. I
: don't
:>know of _any_ of them ending up in computer chess competitions under a new
: name
:>however.
: I do. I know commercial programs based on them.
Possibly so... bot not _valid_ commercial programs. Perhaps no one ever
challenged them, but it doesn't make it 'right'. But you also don't get a
fast parallel search with gnu either, nor with sargon, nor any of the others
I mentioned. And no matter what, being 3x faster than your opponent is +still+
a big advantage when you can swing it. And now it is _easy_ to swing if you
don't mind 'copying'.
:>
:>I think the problem is a different issue. If you have 1,000 people looking
Wouldn't argue there at all. My original motivation stands. I enjoyed
computer chess for a long time dating back to 1968. I played in more ACM
events than I can count, and enjoyed every minute of it. I thought it a nice
touch to return something to a hobby that had given me so much enjoyment.
I'm not terribly surprised that this can be turned into something 'bad' since
almost _anything_ can be made into something bad with a little effort. But
I had not planned on this happening, and tried to word the copyright notice
so that it wouldn't happen.
And failed, to some extent, of course. :)
:>
:>I certainly accept responsibility for creating the circumstances for this
:>to be possible. But I don't accept the responsibility for those with moral
:>standards to low that this seems to be acceptable.
: Well I'll just leave a few Kalashnikovs lying around, and then disclaim
: responsibility for the resulting shootings. Come on, Bob, it was *very*
: predictable what was going to happen just as soon as Crafty got near the top
: programs.
Possibly. However the idea of 'openness' required that I release everything
I had done, not just the 'mundane pieces'. Otherwise the whole thing was not
going to mean much to anyone.
At least I have a couple of 'points' to help now... as there are a couple of
known serious bugs in the stock SMP search, and I won't be releasing fixes
for them since the fix is not necessary to understand the SMP ideas I use.
And copying the search guarantees a serious bug that will hurt program performance
in a game/tournament. At least there is _some_ impetus to stop the outright
copying, while still allowing anyone to read the source and say 'aha, I see how
this search is supposed to work, I can write that myself, and maybe even improve
it a bit here and there." But 'copying' will definitely be dangerous. :)
:>
:>If this was about 'control' I would never have released the source in the
:>first place.
:>
: Why did you release the source ?
see above...
: When I release my program, it's partly for the same fun reasons as anyone,
: you too. But I also get some fame, some money, whatever. You get fame, right
: ? It helps your career, right ?
Not that I notice, no. I was 'known' before I released the source of Crafty.
After releasing the source, people can investigate my programming style, my
software writing skills, and so forth, whether they are good are bad. Now,
there are no 'secrets'.
: But you didn't understand the idea of 'control'. That's kind of sad.
: Chris Whittington
Perhaps... although when you release 'source', then 'control' is somewhat
meaningless if there are people with no scruples around...
Hum Drum
> Hum Drum <hum...@noahark.net> wrote in message
> news:36E02699...@noahark.net...
> [snip]
> >> >Whether you like it or not, this is a kind of precedent, no ?
> >> No. Those people are breaking the law. Perhaps that is what you mean by
> a
> >> precedent? Pirate software production.
> >
> >No, I think he means that when you rest on your laurels too long, you WAIVE
> >your rights.
>
> According to what legal standard do you presume to make this remark? You
> waive your rights when you waive them, and not before. Posting a source
> code document in no way diminishes your legal rights. The copyright holder
> retains copyright for what he/she has written.
>
> It seems to be some popular sentiment that since thievery is so rampant,
> people should just assume that it is OK to steal. Hardly a new idea, but
> not one worthy of serious consideration.
> --
> C-FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
> "The C-FAQ Book" ISBN 0-201-84519-9
> C.A.P. Newsgroup http://www.dejanews.com/~c_a_p
> C.A.P. FAQ: ftp://38.168.214.175/pub/Chess%20Analysis%20Project%20FAQ.htm
Well, no, I wasn't making a plug for thieves! If someone has a right, but
acquiesces in the face of a known violation of that right (i.e. copyright),
then there is a very good legal argument that the right is waived.
The ultimate waiver of a legal right is to simply let the statute of
limitations run on a cause of action.
If there exists ambiguity concerning the meaning of a software license, but a
course of dealing and trade usage develops over time regarding the use of that
software, then the courts will look to that trade usage in interpreting the
license, and give more credence to the way the parties really dealt in the real
world rather than what they say post-litigation.
Thus, if you believe your software license means something, then you better do
something about it to enforce your interpretation, or else the courts won't
listen to your complaint.
It helps to have a very clear license so there is little room for
mis-understanding. That's why Bob should beef up his license so that there is
no confusion about what people can do with his program.
He should put stuff in there about using it in computer chess tourneys - when
and how, etc
Etc, etc.
I guess if Bob wanted to, he could ask for opinions here.
Hum Drum
Shut up. Is this bad netiquette too?
Dann Corbit
>Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>> Hum Drum <hum...@noahark.net> wrote in message
>> news:36E02699...@noahark.net...
>> [snip]
>> >> No. Those people are breaking the law. Perhaps that is what you mean
by
>> a
>> >> precedent? Pirate software production.
>> >
>> >No, I think he means that when you rest on your laurels too long, you
WAIVE
>> >your rights.
>>
They tried to list every conceivable method by which I was not allowed to
transmit certain types of information. "This is silly," I thought. At
least a dozen ways not covered by their list immediately sprang to mind.
The first one I thought of was "smoke signals."
You cannot use a copyrighted work in any manner not expressly allowed in the
copyright agreement. Trying to list all possible violations would be both
silly and futile.
Robert Hyatt
: Hum Drum <hum...@noahark.net> wrote in message
: news:36E02699...@noahark.net...
: [snip]
:>> No. Those people are breaking the law. Perhaps that is what you mean by
: a
:>> precedent? Pirate software production.
:>
:>No, I think he means that when you rest on your laurels too long, you WAIVE
:>your rights.
: According to what legal standard do you presume to make this remark? You
: waive your rights when you waive them, and not before. Posting a source
: code document in no way diminishes your legal rights. The copyright holder
: retains copyright for what he/she has written.
: It seems to be some popular sentiment that since thievery is so rampant,
: people should just assume that it is OK to steal. Hardly a new idea, but
: not one worthy of serious consideration.
: --
I think the point was founded in a bizarre legal procedure known as
"possession by adverse color". It goes like this. I buy some property.
You buy some property that adjoins my property. You build a fence around
your property, and come over on to my property by a significant amount.
If I don't do something about this within a reasonable time (In Mississippi
I believe the period of time is around 7 years) then you can 'claim' my
property and I can't get it back...
We had this happen to a piece of property given to my wife by a friend
of her family's... Someone moved in, set up housekeeping there, and we
found out about it several years later (we didn't go there very often
after my wife's mother and father had died). When we went, we found
someone living there, and when we tried to have this person evicted, we
discovered that we couldn't because after living there for 7 years, they
claimed possession by reason of adverse color and the court upheld that.
So the bottom line seems to be, 'if someone takes something of yours
in a way that it is public (here 'adverse' means that they make it very
clear that they have taken over your property by putting a fence around
it or a house on it) then you had better react quickly, or the legal
system might prevent you from acting at all, if you wait too long.
: C-FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
: "The C-FAQ Book" ISBN 0-201-84519-9
: C.A.P. Newsgroup http://www.dejanews.com/~c_a_p
: C.A.P. FAQ: ftp://38.168.214.175/pub/Chess%20Analysis%20Project%20FAQ.htm
Sean
Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:920650724.11079.0...@news.demon.co.uk...
>However, Gnu Chess *is* the basis of, I think, two commercial programs at
>least. It was also, allegedly, the whole engine basis of 'Chess Wars'
>released last year.
I believe it was Rebel 8 that was used in Chess Wars ? This is as per KK's
belief !
>Bob has effectively given anyone, operating from a country with no
effective
>civil legal system, a licence to make money at his expense.
He has no expenses from a monetary stand point this whole project has been
financed by UAB....Dr. Hyatt does not 100% control the copyright to Crapty,
UAB is in the contract this is why Bobo will not release it
commercially...Dr. Bobo stated that this was in the contract with UAB !
>Sure. And entirely predictable. Worse, the computer chess community is now
>running around in a great panic about Crafty clones at the WCCC in June.
>Special new rules are being invented. Newcomers will find themselves under
>suspicion. There may be demands to see source code, or test your program
out
>for Crafty 'similarities'. There will be gossip and cliques. I don't think
>it is going to be an atmosphere of friendly sportsmanship. Plus ca change.
Problem is ChrisW....anybody using Crapty coding will do badly at WCCC as
Crapty is a below average program...just ask Kasparov !
>Bob let the cat out of bag, and it's not going back in again.
He is also a strange man !
>I think Bob should just allow independent development of Crafty, try and
get
>any developers to police themselves by extending his family support group
>system to include them, and be pleased if they come up with something
>stronger.
I thought this was the whole purpose of the Crapty project......to have the
whole World participate in the writing of a chess program...this is why Dr.
Bobo states he does not like the commercialization of computer chess because
people are now keeping secrets etc....!
Regards,
Sean
Jeremiah Penery
Well, since you don't like that reason, here's another: It's stupid to
quote 100x more text than you contribute.
flum
I already had a remarkably similar thought before I read your post; one of
the ideas that flitted through my flummy brain was that CW makes Ronald
Reagan look like a socialist. It is a strange thing to attack someone who
makes a product freely available as being the progenitor of a "big mess".
michael adams
>
> This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status of Crafty.
>
> Crafty source code is freely available.
>
> Gnu source code is freely available.
>
> Crafty differs from Gnu in that Gnu can be modified and worked on by
> amateurs. The idea with Gnu is to pass back any improvements to the source
> for publication. Good improvements get incorporated. The project doesn't
> seem to be under the control of any one individual, rather it grows as a
> collective effort, or that is the idea.
>
> Crafty can be modified and worked on by amateurs. The idea with Crafty is to
> pass back any improvements to the source for publication. Bob Hyatt decides
> whether this happens. To all entents and purposes this means that Bob
> controls the project. It grows, partly as collective effort, but Bob
> maintains control over it.
>
> Gnu has been taken and used as the starting point for some commercial
> programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
> This appears to be acceptable.
>
> Crafty has been taken and used as the starting point for several amateur
> programs. Presumably they don't intend commercial publication. Use of these
> programs, in tournaments for example, or on the icc, has led to big
> problems, both with Bob and with some other programmers.
>
> What is the purpose of Crafty ?
>
> Chris Whittington
I would try to point out to you,that there is no reality to
'crafty'maybe wooden-works,and garden sculptures,define the 'crafts'
artistery remains,and the distinction 'tween them,arts@crafts I mean
beggars the belief of thinking individuals.
'gards Mick.
michael adams
>
> Hello Chris,
>
> Glad to see you are away from the bra-burner set.....they will corrupt your
> male rutting pig morals......best to be in touch with our "inner pigs" !!> news:920632386.25029.0...@news.demon.co.uk...
>
> >Right. And please don't take this as a flame, but because you did what you
> >did, you created the mess. Which gives you the responsibility to clear it
> >up.
>
> ANYTHING !
>
> >First Bob. Bob is a control-freak.
>
>
> >He 'is' Crafty.
>
> He is also an Android !
>
> >Suprisingly he doesn't even like Bruce offering him his
> end-game-table-bases
> >for free. He prefers to wait 18 months for Eugene to build some instead. I
> >always saw this as a straight 'control-of-Crafty' issue.
>
> rage !
>
> >Multiple cats are out of the bag, and Bob wants a collar and chain on each
> >of them. He can't have it.
>
> will continue to try no matter how bad it makes them feel....hence
> compulsive obsessive thinking and feeling which Dr. Bobo displays
> continuously !
>
> >Most of the chess programmers are just playing god within the micro-world
> of
> >their own PC's. Bob has gone for total world domination. The god of gods.
>
>
> >Bob Hyatt - This Is Your Life. And a frigging great mess it is too. What
> are
> >you going to do about it ?
>
>
> >Personally, I advise letting go.
>
> Crapty even ?
>
> >Chris Whittington
>
> Sean
Eugene is the pretentious concotion,birthed by the 'floyd'and imposed on
the people,a guitar-player in effect.'egad thank the lords Eugene
does'not feature in my life Sean? "gards Mick.
michael adams
>
> "Blaming the victim" Miscreants pick up a hammer and smash windows with it.
> I guess we should sue the "Stanley" corporation. Or better yet, those
> persons with all those tempting windows for causing the miscreants to go
> astray should be sued. How dare they lure those poor unsuspecting lads into
> deviant behavior.
>
> Dr. Hyatt has not asked for anything that is not fully within his legal
> rights.
>
> Perhaps it was a bit naive to imagine that even among such an intellectual
> group as computer programmers there would be those without a shred of honor
> or dignity. Perhaps the end of a golden age is drawing to a close. In the
> 1960's and 1970's people used to publish algorithms to the ACM just for the
> sheer joy of discovering them. Sharing information was a way of life.
>
> Hiding information retards progress. But with all the misuse and abuse
> perhaps people will have to start hiding things now. That's quite sad
> really. In more ways than one.
> C-FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
> "The C-FAQ Book" ISBN 0-201-84519-9
> C.A.P. Newsgroup http://www.dejanews.com/~c_a_p
> C.A.P. FAQ: ftp://38.168.214.175/pub/Chess%20Analysis%20Project%20FAQ.htm
j...@yktvmv.watson.ibm.com
on Fri, 5 Mar 1999 16:14:35 -0000,
"Chris Whittington" <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> writes:
>Right. But, there is also the question of asserting these rights. Gnu is
>fatally compromised now by the failure to assert rights after Bruce's
>evidence last year over the Chess Wars product.
I doubt Gnu's (alleged) failure to assert rights in the past
prevents it from asserting rights in the future.
Chris Whittington also posted:
>I find this slow variation to a new product legally and morally acceptable.
>They would have been helped by Bob's ideas, they would use his system as a
>test-bed and save themselves much time and grief. And at the end, they'ld
>have a valid commercial product.
Morality is a matter of opinion. Legally as long the new
program is recognizably derived from Crafty it is a derived work
under copyright law and cannot legally be sold without permission
from the original copyright holder (in this case Hyatt).
James B. Shearer
RDavis101
>From: "Chris Whittington" <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
>Date: 3/5/99 10:14 AM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <920650724.11079.0...@news.demon.co.uk>
>
>
>Dusan Dobes wrote in message ...
>>
>>
>>: This post is an attempt to try and pin down the status of Crafty.
>>
>>: Crafty source code is freely available.
>>
>>: Gnu source code is freely available.
>>
>>: Crafty differs from Gnu in that Gnu can be modified and worked on by
>>: amateurs. The idea with Gnu is to pass back any improvements to the
>source
>>: for publication. Good improvements get incorporated. The project doesn't
>>: seem to be under the control of any one individual, rather it grows as a
>>: collective effort, or that is the idea.
>>
>>: Crafty can be modified and worked on by amateurs. The idea with Crafty is
>to
>>: pass back any improvements to the source for publication. Bob Hyatt
>decides
>>: whether this happens. To all entents and purposes this means that Bob
>>: controls the project. It grows, partly as collective effort, but Bob
>>: maintains control over it.
>>
>>: Gnu has been taken and used as the starting point for some commercial
>>: programs. It gets published in modified (presumably very modified) form.
>>: This appears to be acceptable.
>>
>
>True. 'Acceptable' is the wrong word.
>
>least. It was also, allegedly, the whole engine basis of 'Chess Wars'
>supply the chess engine for that product. Only to be told that our very low
>price was 'too high'. Perhaps we should have offered it at $0, since that
>appeared to be the price of Gnu Chess, for all that ever got done about it
>by the Free Software Foundation.
>
>Nevertheless, most 'insiders' know that Gnu Chess was the start point of two
>(at least) commercial programs. These 'insiders' assume that the divergence
>from Gnu Chess is now very large, and the programs concerned are 'accepted'
>as belonging to their current authors.
>
>
>>
>>Sources can be modified and distributed under the terms of GPL
>>(General Public License). It is _not_ acceptable to take or modify
>>GNU sources and change the license. It violates the GPL. Gnuchess
>>and all it's clones should be distributed freely and with sources.
>>For details see http://www.opensource.org/gpl-license.html
>>
>>You should _always_ check the licence conditions before
>>using/modifying/distributing sofware, right?
>
>fatally compromised now by the failure to assert rights after Bruce's
>evidence last year over the Chess Wars product.
>
>People's Republic of China company duplicates, for sale, 100,000 Craftys.
>How is Bob going to deal with that ? Suppose North Korean company wraps up
>Crafty (with mods) in a GUI and starts licencing it to publishers. How is
>Bob going to take any action to stop it.
>
>Suppose some guy in Russia starts selling GUI-fied Crafty clones for
>download from his website at $15 a time. How will Bob stop that ?
>
>civil legal system, a licence to make money at his expense.
>
>>
>>: programs. Presumably they don't intend commercial publication. Use of
>these
>>: programs, in tournaments for example, or on the icc, has led to big
>>: problems, both with Bob and with some other programmers.
>>
>>: What is the purpose of Crafty ?
>>
>>as the license of GNU. The licensing notice in main.c permits
>>using, distributing, and modifying, but it says nothing about
>>distributing modified Crafty. That means, you should ask the author
>>for permission before doing so. Bionic Impact is currently freely
>>distributed via Internet without permission. Voyager is not
>>distributed, but it is most probably 99% Crafty and someone other
>>than Robert Hyatt claims sole authorship. It is bad behaviour,
>>at least.
>
>running around in a great panic about Crafty clones at the WCCC in June.
>Special new rules are being invented. Newcomers will find themselves under
>suspicion. There may be demands to see source code, or test your program out
>for Crafty 'similarities'. There will be gossip and cliques. I don't think
>it is going to be an atmosphere of friendly sportsmanship. Plus ca change.
>
>
>it is very tempting for young programmers to imagine they can 'improve' on
>Crafty and develop a program themselves. Perhaps they intend to slowly
>modify more and more of Crafty until it is kind-of their's. Then perhaps
>they intend to make it commercial. Similar to what I assumed has happened
>with Gnu Chess.
>
>They would have been helped by Bob's ideas, they would use his system as a
>test-bed and save themselves much time and grief. And at the end, they'ld
>have a valid commercial product.
>
>too, just so long as they don't make commercial exploitation until they get
>to the end. I don't see why they should be banned from tournaments (they
>are), or subjected to attack by newsgroup (they are).
>
>In essence, it seems to me, that the entire copyleft process, Bob's source
>code releases and so on are naive mechanisms, the kind of utopian ideas
>developed by immature students. Faced with the real world and its villains,
>Bob and Gnu just look foolish. And the mess created impacts on the rest of
>us.
>
>any developers to police themselves by extending his family support group
>system to include them, and be pleased if they come up with something
>solution of force of control measures needed to police away Crafty
>derivatives that deny their origin are likely to be worse than the original
>problem.
>
>
>
>
>>
>>Dusan Dobes
>>
>>: Chris Whittington
>>
>
>
>
>
Chris,
After reading a number of your posts, let me ask some questions. It's difficult
for me to understand, especially without much knowledge of the history
involved, to what extent you might be pissed off because Crafty simply impacts
the bottom line of CSTal. Let me ask you directly then: Do you think the fact
that Crafty is publically available impacts the money you might make from CSTal
in any way? If so, how?
Those are important questions, because I think it will help the readers
understand to what extent the controversty is about "the principle of the
thing" versus money. You note above, for example, how Gnu Chess impacted your
business, and so on, and so on, and in your message which started this thread,
you did a point by point comparison of Crafty with Gnu Chess. Some readers
might draw the conclusion that Crafty impacts your business, and that the
arguments over principle are really just a smokescreen about money. And money,
of course, is one of the things that people "get personal" about.
That said, even if the argument really is about money, it doesn't necessarily
invalidate your feelings on the matter. You certainly have a right to make
money, if you can offer a product that has incremental value in the
marketplace. There seems to be a fear, however, that this may not be possible
because Crafty or one of its derivatives, especially in a GUI-ed form, might
compete favorably with CSTal, perhaps too favorably. If so, your feelings about
Bob are probably similar to how Bill Gates feels about Linus Torvalds, though
the analogy isn't exact, of course.
Roger
Rolf Tueschen
Easy one.
Just think of IE. Rings a bell? If not, please set your remarkable
thought into gear ... :)
Rolf Tueschen
<7bpbsk$o3s$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>:
>Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7boqqs$jkm$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>:>Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>:>
>:>: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7bn4n6$3hg$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>:>:>Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>: It was a great analysis. Bob seeking the new high of trying to control the
>: world, just as if it were a complex program like Crafty, always Rebelling
>: against him. See - Ed understood you :)
>I don't understand the concept 'control the world'. I do understand the
>concept 'control _my_ code' however... and I fail to see how you leap from
>the latter concept to the former statement...???
>: What ? More difficulties and discouragement than Crafty gives them already ?
>: How that ?
>Easy... When I started in computer chess, and went to my first computer chess
>event, I played several other programs. All from people that were pretty new
>at this, just like I was. There was no "cadre" of chess 4.x clones that would
>wipe everyone out and finish collectively at the front of the pack. So while I
>might lose to chess 4.x, I might beat some other program, and in general, be
>encouraged.
>However a newcomer is going to have a real problem beating Crafty, for
>several reasons. It is 4 years old and fairly 'mature'. It has been modified
>a lot over those 4 years and plays fairly strong chess. It can use a parallel
>machine (that is fairly inexpensive today) to get a signficant speed advantage.
>And, in simple terms, is a big obstacle for a beginner to get past. If he goes
>to a tournament and loses to "Crafty" that doesn't seem too bad since crafty is
>known. But if he goes to a tournament and gets beat by _everybody_ he is going
>to likely be very discouraged. And if he gets beat by everybody, because they
>are really running disguised crafty programs, that would be bad, IMHO.
>that is the issue here I am unhappy with. _I_ don't mind competing with
>modified crafty clones at all.
ROTFL.
As a real newbie I read the agitated nonsense about VOYAGER. And it
makes sense with Hyatt's own statement above. It seems as if CRAFTY lost
almost automatically against VOYAGER ... So, it's quite normal, that
certain counter-actions had to be considered.
ROTFL.
BTW. GUNDA once did NOT state that it was a Crafty clone ...
And we all agreed that in a way it was a nice gesture to let them play
and participate. Hyatt even tolerated that Gunda might end ahead of
Crafty. Only if control leads you into slavery it becomes a problem.
On the other hand, Chris W., some weeks before the next WCCC, is it
really your concern how Hyatt wants to rule the world, or do you detest
the many dangerous Crafty clones, dangerous for your own prog? In other
words, is it Hyatt who wants to rule the world, or is it his collegues
who want that he might put some new order on ...?
> But I don't believe that they should be used
>in computer chess events, since there has _always_ been a rule about duplicates.
Jakarta!
>: You're really bothered about 'people writing their own program getting a lot
>: of difficulty and discouragement'? Foolish me, I hadn't noticed your
>: concern. I'll pass on your empathies to all the other programmers too.
>Not sure what you mean. The above is my concern. Stated simply and concisely.
>In Jakarta I took issue with Gunda-1, because I thought that effectively gave
>me two chances to do well. Both finished near the top, to make the point. One
>of them displaced someone that would have finished higher.
>I'm not worried one bit about "all the other programmers" as I have said before.
>I am more concerned with "all the _new_ programmers". Old programmers can defend
>themselves against Crafty just fine, although the SMP search offers certain
>obstacles to even them. But that wasn't the issue.
>Computer chess is about 'creativity'... not about 'copying'...
Wasn't it common sense that basically all programmers copied the basics?
The rest is tuning and testing. What else does Bruce Moreland (just his
name as an example) do all day long?
It would be better to state that on the base of copying programmers need
a lot of talents and creativity to find something unique.
I for one, as a layman, doesn't see any rocket science, when you try to
adapt your program to always newest hardware. And it is surely not about
chess in the end ...
>: I do. I know commercial programs based on them.
>Possibly so... bot not _valid_ commercial programs. Perhaps no one ever
>challenged them, but it doesn't make it 'right'. But you also don't get a
>fast parallel search with gnu either, nor with sargon, nor any of the others
>I mentioned. And no matter what, being 3x faster than your opponent is +still+
>a big advantage when you can swing it. And now it is _easy_ to swing if you
>don't mind 'copying'.
>Wouldn't argue there at all. My original motivation stands. I enjoyed
>computer chess for a long time dating back to 1968. I played in more ACM
>events than I can count, and enjoyed every minute of it. I thought it a nice
>touch to return something to a hobby that had given me so much enjoyment.
>I'm not terribly surprised that this can be turned into something 'bad' since
>almost _anything_ can be made into something bad with a little effort. But
>I had not planned on this happening, and tried to word the copyright notice
>so that it wouldn't happen.
>And failed, to some extent, of course. :)
Also, must be a classy lawyer at UAB ... :)
>Possibly. However the idea of 'openness' required that I release everything
>I had done, not just the 'mundane pieces'. Otherwise the whole thing was not
>going to mean much to anyone.
No? How about this. Hyatt puts all the average new stuff available into
Crafty. Some special stuff into, ahem, into, into _it_ ...
>: When I release my program, it's partly for the same fun reasons as anyone,
>: you too. But I also get some fame, some money, whatever. You get fame, right
>: ? It helps your career, right ?
How naive, Chris!
>Not that I notice, no. I was 'known' before I released the source of Crafty.
>After releasing the source, people can investigate my programming style, my
>software writing skills, and so forth, whether they are good are bad. Now,
>there are no 'secrets'.
:)
>: But you didn't understand the idea of 'control'. That's kind of sad.
>: Chris Whittington
>Perhaps... although when you release 'source', then 'control' is somewhat
>meaningless if there are people with no scruples around...
Especially if Hyatt points with at least three fingers in his own
direction if he points with one at these people. <sigh>
Chris Whittington
RDavis101 wrote in message <19990305212216...@ng66.aol.com>...
No.
The Internet 'marketplace' is very, very small. I think there are one or two
chess software houses that try and develop sales into this market. But even
they rely for their main business by advertising and word-of-mouth into the
chess (not computer chess) community. Fritz and Rebel, maybe the Millenium
people, although they don't seem to have much presence.. Crafty is very
specialised, you need quite a deal of computer savvy to get it working
properly. So it 'competes' in a relatively high-knowledge niche market. I
guess people will choose between the GUI of Fritz, the UI of Rebel or the
non-UI, but freeness of Crafty. Fritz and Rebel type products rely on
relatively high price, customer loyalty to keep coming back for the latest
upgrade, and, importantly, direct sales, so the whole profit goes to the
primary developer. To get Crafty (unless you buy it from Chessbase) you need
a modem. To get most other chess programs you need a mailing address, or
shoes to get to the local store.
CSTal, by contrast, on those occasions when we make a new version, which is
not often, sells for a few dollars into the entertainment software
distribution business. It then gets sold on to retailers and finally
end-users. We sell a few copies direct to resellers, and a few direct to
end-users, but no big deal. All this actually accounts for only a very small
proportion of the business here. Mostly we are working on engine ports,
licences, GUI development, console development, new product development and
so on, mostly, but not entirely, in areas outside of chess. In other words,
our trade with endusers is negligable compared to our trade with other
companies around the world.
>
>Those are important questions, because I think it will help the readers
>understand to what extent the controversty is about "the principle of the
>thing" versus money.
I rather tend to see myself as an 'amateur' chess programmer who argues with
Bob about philosophical issues related to bean-counting or whatever. So the
main impact of Crafty on me is that the time spent on writing posts detracts
from getting on with other, probably more important, work. Probably this
costs Bob time as well. Presumably we argue because we are nuts. Actually, I
had an interesting chat with another programmer some weeks ago, where we
both admitted that we posted mostly during those times in the development
cycle where our programs were being mostly tested. Like small program change
that takes 30 minutes is followed by long test cycle that takes 24 hours. So
we have 23:30 hours daily minus sleep, family, eating, getting on with life
etc for Bob-bashing on the net.
>You note above, for example, how Gnu Chess impacted your
>business, and so on, and so on, and in your message which started this
thread,
That's different. We do a lot of engine providing for other entertainment
software companies, or work engines and GUI's up onto different formats. Not
just chess, but many other engines too.
If a publisher is able to go and 'acquire', or whatever spin you care to
place on it, a Gnu engine, or a Crafty engine, without any cost, then, sure
that impacts on us. Especially when the publisher in question was in
negotiation with us for an engine for Chess Wars. The fact that they got it
'free' (as reported by Bruce), means that *no* money at all came back into
the chess development community. If nobody charges for this program, then
engine programmers, interface developers, people with ideas all lose, no ?
Gnu, as far as I can tell, seems to be a program that has all control over
it lost. That's bad news.
Crafty has plenty of control over it. It is directly and forcefully defended
by Bob and Bruce at times as well. My argument was actually to release some
of the control, so that young programmers could work on, develop, and
improve Crafty. I figured that knowledge programmers wouldn't get involved
in the project as it currently stood, because it was always going to be
Bob's. My argument was for Bob to let go. Part of my reasoning is (was)
that, if Bob holds very tightly onto Crafty, then, for sure, there will be
people working to develop it secretly, hiding the source, encoding it,
changing it in ways that can't be detected. These versions may then become
commercial product. It's that kind of illicit spread that I urged Bob to
deal with by relaxing his terms, and thus, in effect having *more* control,
by reducing the incentive for others to cheat. He won't change, so.
>you did a point by point comparison of Crafty with Gnu Chess. Some readers
>might draw the conclusion that Crafty impacts your business, and that the
>arguments over principle are really just a smokescreen about money. And
money,
>of course, is one of the things that people "get personal" about.
More often money gets brought up by flamers looking to have a go.
>
>That said, even if the argument really is about money, it doesn't
necessarily
>invalidate your feelings on the matter.
Mmmwwwwssthwack ! ! !
You're so kind. Gimme another big kiss. One of those Judas kisses, I luv
'em.
>You certainly have a right to make
>money, if you can offer a product that has incremental value in the
>marketplace.
Hey, thanks !
>There seems to be a fear, however, that this may not be possible
>because Crafty or one of its derivatives, especially in a GUI-ed form,
might
>compete favorably with CSTal, perhaps too favorably.
I'm sure that, given the Internet becoming a huge world-wide marketplace,
any product, given away for free, and well designed, will impact on all or
any product that is sold for money. But we're not at this stage, by any
means. And if we do get there, and developers have no alternative ways to
get funds, then that'll be the end of chess engine development.
More likely is that the Internet will eliminate resellers and distributors,
so that you can buy direct from primary producers at low prices. Or, direct
from huge mail-order houses at low mark ups (amazon.com). You are aware that
most goods that sell in retail for $100, probably cost about $5 to make ?
That primary producers sell into distribution at 35% of the retail price ?
So by the time Bob can have world-wide distribution of Crafty into every
home in the world (and he'll need a GUI for that), commercial products,
probably better anyway, since commercials are always incentivised by the
prospect of market-death (Bob doesn't ever face market-death, he has the
university to keep him warm), will be available at a fraction of their
current price. Maybe. One day.
>If so, your feelings about
>Bob are probably similar to how Bill Gates feels about Linus Torvalds,
though
>the analogy isn't exact, of course.
I doubt Gates loses a second of sleep over it. Everything moves very fast in
this industry, it's not about fighting old battles, but seeking out new
ideas and opportunities. Who has the strongest, fastest, bestest chess
engine and interface and and and is yesterdays news. They all beat you
anyway, no ? The battle is over in the mass-mind after DB-Kasparov, no ? The
chess program industry is a bit like those old balsa-wood aeroplane model
shops - sidelined and covered in dust, and hardly anybody except anoraks
ever go there.
Chris Whittington
>
>Roger
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Chris Whittington
p_m_...@mindspring.com wrote in message
<7bs75p$9pj$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>...
>
>Chris Whittington wrote in message
><920650724.11079.0...@news.demon.co.uk>...
>[Snip]
>>So, for me, if the end-result is acceptable, the intermediate stages must
>be
>>too, just so long as they don't make commercial exploitation until they
get
>>to the end.
>
>means!
>Nor do I accept your concern for Bob's property rights. Rather, I suspect
>you see
>Bob as undercutting your sales, just as the GNU-Chess thieves you describe
>have.
>
>Further, I find your analysis of Bob's motivations needlessly tortuous. You
>want
>motivation, "follow the money"! Bob isn't looking for any. You are.
>
>Pat
Ok, cool. I'll just go back to polishing the Rolls Royce.
>
>
>
mclane
>To get Crafty (unless you buy it from Chessbase) you need
>a modem. To get most other chess programs you need a mailing address, or
>shoes to get to the local store.
! :-))))
>CSTal, by contrast, on those occasions when we make a new version,
! :-))))
>>Those are important questions, because I think it will help the readers
>>understand to what extent the controversty is about "the principle of the
>>thing" versus money.
>I rather tend to see myself as an 'amateur' chess programmer who argues with
>Bob about philosophical issues related to bean-counting or whatever. So the
>main impact of Crafty on me is that the time spent on writing posts detracts
>from getting on with other, probably more important, work. Probably this
>costs Bob time as well. Presumably we argue because we are nuts.
! :-)))
> Actually, I
>had an interesting chat with another programmer some weeks ago, where we
>both admitted that we posted mostly during those times in the development
>cycle where our programs were being mostly tested. Like small program change
>that takes 30 minutes is followed by long test cycle that takes 24 hours. So
>we have 23:30 hours daily minus sleep, family, eating, getting on with life
>etc for Bob-bashing on the net.
! :-))))
Brilliant !
>The
>chess program industry is a bit like those old balsa-wood aeroplane model
>shops - sidelined and covered in dust, and hardly anybody except anoraks
>ever go there.
! :-))))
>Chris Whittington
very good !
best wishes
Dann Corbit
[snip]
>Ok, scenario for you.
>
>Some guy takes the Gnu or the Crafty program and starts fiddling around
with
>it, gets it to compile, plays chess against it.
>
>Reckons he can do better, mods some stuff, reckons the results are good.
>
>Mods more of it.
>
>Mods more of it.
>
>Adds new functions.
>
>Rewrites sections.
>
>Rewrites more sections.
>
>Add more new functions.
>
>Eventually rewrites everything.
>
>1. Is the end result 'legal' ?
>
>2. Can he commercially exploit the end result ?
>
>3. Are any of the intermediate results 'legal' ?
>
>4. Can he commercially exploit any of them ?
>
>
>
>7. At which point does he need to credit the original author, and at which
>point can he stop crediting ?
>
>Messy ?
software is yours because the code was written by you. It would take a
lawyer to figure out where the dividing line is and even then you would
probably never be sure unless ever single line was rewritten by you. That's
way it is a good idea to learn concepts from example code, but not to just
cut and paste blocks of it into your own source.
Algorithms (except those covered by patents) belong to everybody. Source
code only belongs to everybody when it is in the public domain. I think
that there is a great deal of ignorance about what you can do with source
code. Quite likely, that lack of knowlege is the biggest part of the
problem. Many people may figure that since they can see the source code
that they can do anything they like with it. But that is not true, not even
with copyleft software.
p_m_...@mindspring.com
mclane
>Ok, cool. I'll just go back to polishing the Rolls Royce.
the rolls of your wife or your one ?
:-))
best wishes
Chris Whittington
mclane wrote in message <7btqif$e28$1...@steve.prima.de>...
>"Chris Whittington" <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>Ok, cool. I'll just go back to polishing the Rolls Royce.
>
>the rolls of your wife or your one ?
>:-))
>
Thorsten. It would be appallingly ostentatious for a member of the British
aristocratic class to have more than one Rolls Royce. Only a German would
even think of doing that. Rolls Royces are not beans. You don't get better
by having more of them. Only a German would even think of counting them.
Any way, since Rolls Royce got bought by the Germans, the social cachet of
ownership took a nose-dive.
So I sold it to the neighbour :))
>
>best wishes
>
>mcl...@prima.de
>
mclane
>Thorsten. It would be appallingly ostentatious for a member of the British
>aristocratic class to have more than one Rolls Royce. Only a German would
>even think of doing that. Rolls Royces are not beans. You don't get better
>by having more of them. Only a German would even think of counting them.
>Any way, since Rolls Royce got bought by the Germans, the social cachet of
>ownership took a nose-dive.
>So I sold it to the neighbour :))
thought so. since we bought rolls royce and volvo and other
motor-companies, the whole world is different :-)))
what a pity.
best wishes
j...@yktvmv.watson.ibm.com
on Sat, 06 Mar 1999 23:51:29 GMT,
"Dann Corbit" <dco...@solutionsiq.com> writes:
>Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>>point can he stop crediting ?
>>
>>Messy ?
>No doubt about it. And you are right, there is *some* point where the
>software is yours because the code was written by you. It would take a
>lawyer to figure out where the dividing line is and even then you would
>probably never be sure unless ever single line was rewritten by you. That's
>way it is a good idea to learn concepts from example code, but not to just
>cut and paste blocks of it into your own source.
I don't think it's all that complicated. As long as the new
program is recognizably derived from the original it is a derived work
under copyright law and remains partially the property of the original
author. Btw rewriting every line is not necessarily enough, if I
translate a novel from English to French this does not make it an
original work.
Certainly there are borderline cases but you plan to sell
your program commercially it is prudent to start from scratch.
James B. Shearer
Gareth McCaughan
> At least I have a couple of 'points' to help now... as there are a
> couple of known serious bugs in the stock SMP search, and I won't be
> releasing fixes for them since the fix is not necessary to
> understand the SMP ideas I use. And copying the search guarantees a
> serious bug that will hurt program performance in a game/tournament.
> At least there is _some_ impetus to stop the outright copying, while
> still allowing anyone to read the source and say 'aha, I see how
> this search is supposed to work, I can write that myself, and maybe
> even improve it a bit here and there." But 'copying' will
> definitely be dangerous. :)
yikes. May I urge you not to do this?
Alternatively, you could write a little program that changes
random characters in the source -- say one per 10000 characters
or so. After all, anyone who wants to understand your program
will be able to find these and correct them. :-|
It's *wrong* to distribute code with known bugs in it. And anyone
who is capable of the minimal effort needed to disguise Crafty
at all is probably also capable of fixing the bugs you're intending
to leave in (either that, or else plenty of people trying to learn
about parallel search won't be). And if you distribute Crafty with
known bugs, someone will probably just make a patch available on
the web somewhere. In which case, what have you gained?
And if you do this, you will be providing ammunition for the
idiots who hate you, or Crafty, or free software. It's in
everyone's interest for Crafty to be as strong as possible.
(With a few possible exceptions, like the authors of Fritz,
Rebel etc...)
This is *not* a good way to protect your code.
(Note: I have no vested interest here; I have neither an SMP
machine to run Crafty on nor sufficient expertise at chess for,
say, a couple of hundred rating points to make much real difference
to my chances of beating it. Nor do I have any intention of building
a Crafty clone myself.)
--
Gareth McCaughan Dept. of Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics,
gj...@dpmms.cam.ac.uk Cambridge University, England.
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote:
:> At least I have a couple of 'points' to help now... as there are a
:> couple of known serious bugs in the stock SMP search, and I won't be
:> releasing fixes for them since the fix is not necessary to
:> understand the SMP ideas I use. And copying the search guarantees a
:> serious bug that will hurt program performance in a game/tournament.
:> At least there is _some_ impetus to stop the outright copying, while
:> still allowing anyone to read the source and say 'aha, I see how
:> this search is supposed to work, I can write that myself, and maybe
:> even improve it a bit here and there." But 'copying' will
:> definitely be dangerous. :)
: yikes. May I urge you not to do this?
: Alternatively, you could write a little program that changes
: random characters in the source -- say one per 10000 characters
: or so. After all, anyone who wants to understand your program
: will be able to find these and correct them. :-|
: It's *wrong* to distribute code with known bugs in it. And anyone
: who is capable of the minimal effort needed to disguise Crafty
: at all is probably also capable of fixing the bugs you're intending
: to leave in (either that, or else plenty of people trying to learn
: about parallel search won't be). And if you distribute Crafty with
: known bugs, someone will probably just make a patch available on
: the web somewhere. In which case, what have you gained?
A couple of points. the bugs don't affect 99.999% of the crafty
'users' since most are not doing parallel search. The 'executables'
also will not have any bugs at all (at least no known bugs) so that
even SMP users will have no problems.
Second, these bugs are _not_ easy to find. IE they took me
over a year to catch, because they are not bugs that 'crash'
the program, rather they just produce minor scoring changes
that can affect the search in a long game.
I have not yet decided what to do, overall. But at least these
'bugs' mean that if someone does try to outright copy crafty, they
will encounter some problems in doing so.
: And if you do this, you will be providing ammunition for the
: idiots who hate you, or Crafty, or free software. It's in
: everyone's interest for Crafty to be as strong as possible.
: (With a few possible exceptions, like the authors of Fritz,
: Rebel etc...)
: This is *not* a good way to protect your code.
You may be correct. As I said, no releases have been made since this
was found, so it isn't an issue right now. However, it does seem obvious
that something has to be done to protect the integrity of chess tournaments
that are held to encourage new programs.
: (Note: I have no vested interest here; I have neither an SMP
: machine to run Crafty on nor sufficient expertise at chess for,
: say, a couple of hundred rating points to make much real difference
: to my chances of beating it. Nor do I have any intention of building
: a Crafty clone myself.)
: --
: Gareth McCaughan Dept. of Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics,
: gj...@dpmms.cam.ac.uk Cambridge University, England.
--
Gareth McCaughan
[I said:]
>: It's *wrong* to distribute code with known bugs in it. And anyone
>: who is capable of the minimal effort needed to disguise Crafty
>: at all is probably also capable of fixing the bugs you're intending
>: to leave in (either that, or else plenty of people trying to learn
>: about parallel search won't be). And if you distribute Crafty with
>: known bugs, someone will probably just make a patch available on
>: the web somewhere. In which case, what have you gained?
>
> A couple of points. the bugs don't affect 99.999% of the crafty
> 'users' since most are not doing parallel search. The 'executables'
> also will not have any bugs at all (at least no known bugs) so that
> even SMP users will have no problems.
So you're penalising Crafty users who happen not to be running
either Windows or Linux? I'm not entirely convinced by this...
(And I bet SMP machines will become commoner with the passage
of time.)
> Second, these bugs are _not_ easy to find. IE they took me
> over a year to catch, because they are not bugs that 'crash'
> the program, rather they just produce minor scoring changes
> that can affect the search in a long game.
In which case, I suggest that code with such subtle bugs in it
is worse than useless for your educational purpose in making
Crafty available in the first place.
> I have not yet decided what to do, overall. But at least these
> 'bugs' mean that if someone does try to outright copy crafty, they
> will encounter some problems in doing so.
I understand. And, of course, Crafty isn't my work, so it's easy
for *me* to say "the gain isn't worth the cost"... :-|
> You may be correct. As I said, no releases have been made since this
> was found, so it isn't an issue right now. However, it does seem obvious
> that something has to be done to protect the integrity of chess tournaments
> that are held to encourage new programs.
That's certainly clear. I just hope there's some better way of
doing it.
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote:
: [I said:]
:>: It's *wrong* to distribute code with known bugs in it. And anyone
:>: who is capable of the minimal effort needed to disguise Crafty
:>: at all is probably also capable of fixing the bugs you're intending
:>: to leave in (either that, or else plenty of people trying to learn
:>: about parallel search won't be). And if you distribute Crafty with
:>: known bugs, someone will probably just make a patch available on
:>: the web somewhere. In which case, what have you gained?
:>
:> A couple of points. the bugs don't affect 99.999% of the crafty
:> 'users' since most are not doing parallel search. The 'executables'
:> also will not have any bugs at all (at least no known bugs) so that
:> even SMP users will have no problems.
: So you're penalising Crafty users who happen not to be running
: either Windows or Linux? I'm not entirely convinced by this...
No. The only 'penalty' at present is anyone running crafty on a SMP
box. And as I said, 16.6 has not yet been released. And I am not sure
what I am going to do about this. But I see no real easy way to prevent
the 'SMP-copy-war' from continuing.
: (And I bet SMP machines will become commoner with the passage
: of time.)
Absolutely. I have at least two students (undergraduate, mind you) that are running
dual pentium II machines with Linux. One has two machines in his dorm room networked
together in fact, running a dual PII and a single machine, with the ability to run PVM
across all of them. So SMP is 'coming' quickly.
:> Second, these bugs are _not_ easy to find. IE they took me
:> over a year to catch, because they are not bugs that 'crash'
:> the program, rather they just produce minor scoring changes
:> that can affect the search in a long game.
: In which case, I suggest that code with such subtle bugs in it
: is worse than useless for your educational purpose in making
: Crafty available in the first place.
There I disagree. Because the bug is so subtle you would _not_ notice it
in reading over the code. The comments have always been 'correct' and this
last bug is _one_ line of code missing from a 40,000+ lines of code
program.
:> I have not yet decided what to do, overall. But at least these
:> 'bugs' mean that if someone does try to outright copy crafty, they
:> will encounter some problems in doing so.
: I understand. And, of course, Crafty isn't my work, so it's easy
: for *me* to say "the gain isn't worth the cost"... :-|
:> You may be correct. As I said, no releases have been made since this
:> was found, so it isn't an issue right now. However, it does seem obvious
:> that something has to be done to protect the integrity of chess tournaments
:> that are held to encourage new programs.
: That's certainly clear. I just hope there's some better way of
: doing it.
I'm open to suggestions. I had hoped that 'morality' would work, but
was disappointed there. But I'm all ears for suggestions on how to control
this 'problem'.
IE one person privately suggested that maybe I release the serial source code
normally, but have a much stronger license agreement for the SMP version, to
provide better controls. But somehow that sounds like it won't work in the
current 'environment'.
Gareth McCaughan
>:> A couple of points. the bugs don't affect 99.999% of the crafty
>:> 'users' since most are not doing parallel search. The 'executables'
>:> also will not have any bugs at all (at least no known bugs) so that
>:> even SMP users will have no problems.
>
>: So you're penalising Crafty users who happen not to be running
>: either Windows or Linux? I'm not entirely convinced by this...
>
> No. The only 'penalty' at present is anyone running crafty on a SMP
> box.
Sorry; I was sloppy in my wording. I meant: "So you're proposing
to penalise Crafty users who happen not to be running either
Windows or Linux on their SMP boxes?"
>: In which case, I suggest that code with such subtle bugs in it
>: is worse than useless for your educational purpose in making
>: Crafty available in the first place.
>
> There I disagree. Because the bug is so subtle you would _not_ notice it
> in reading over the code. The comments have always been 'correct' and this
> last bug is _one_ line of code missing from a 40,000+ lines of code
> program.
I just had a *very* cursory look at the code, to see what I'd need
to do if I wanted to learn how to do parallel searches from it.
The comments would *not* be enough for me; I'd need to read the
code. In that case, I can easily imagine thinking "I don't really
understand what's going on here perfectly; I don't see why he
hasn't done X. But Hyatt is an expert on this stuff, so it's
probably right". In which case I might perpetuate the bug in
code of my own -- and of course it wouldn't have on it the stern
"NB that there is a known bug in this. I'm leaving it in to
frustrate cheats" warning that Crafty would have. So my code
might in turn infect other people... Even worse: I might spot
what I *think* (wrongly) is an error in your code, and think
"Ah, Hyatt said there was a problem. This must be it", in which
case I'd (1) change something subtle but correct in the algorithms
and (2) leave the original problem in.
> I'm open to suggestions. I had hoped that 'morality' would work, but
> was disappointed there. But I'm all ears for suggestions on how to control
> this 'problem'.
>
> IE one person privately suggested that maybe I release the serial source code
> normally, but have a much stronger license agreement for the SMP version, to
> provide better controls. But somehow that sounds like it won't work in the
> current 'environment'.
The long arm of the law?
"You may read, use, modify and distribute this code as you please,
with the following restrictions: [...] You may not sell any derived
work without the express permission of the copyright holder, and
you may not use any derived work for competing in tournaments
without the express permission of the copyright holder."
This doesn't guarantee that the evil *******s will get caught; nothing
will do that. But it does mean that if they do it then they are clearly,
unambiguously in breach of international law.
I still think that distributing Crafty with broken SMP code is
(1) not enough (because it's presumably much easier to find and
fix the bug than to write all the code correctly in the first
place; so cheaters can still do that), and (2) too much (because
it makes life harder for people who want to learn from your code,
and because it means some ordinary users will get a broken
program that they won't know how to fix).
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote:
:>:> A couple of points. the bugs don't affect 99.999% of the crafty
:>:> 'users' since most are not doing parallel search. The 'executables'
:>:> also will not have any bugs at all (at least no known bugs) so that
:>:> even SMP users will have no problems.
:>
:>: So you're penalising Crafty users who happen not to be running
:>: either Windows or Linux? I'm not entirely convinced by this...
:>
:> No. The only 'penalty' at present is anyone running crafty on a SMP
:> box.
: Sorry; I was sloppy in my wording. I meant: "So you're proposing
: to penalise Crafty users who happen not to be running either
: Windows or Linux on their SMP boxes?"
As I said, _no_ decision has been made. And there are alternatives to
any sort of penalty. IE I can provide linux, solaris and irix executables
easily. And possibly RS6000, HP and alpha as well. So the problem won't
be 'penalizing' anyone. But nothing has been decided yet.
:>: In which case, I suggest that code with such subtle bugs in it
You may well be right. That's why I initiated the discussion about
this. I don't want the cure to be worse than the problem, obviously.
But the problem is potentially bad, based on recent developments.
Isofarro
into SMP (Symmetrical Multi Processors?). But I have a few thoughts on
this - based on two assumptions I'm making here.
1.) SMP's can still run normal single processor code.
2.) There are separate code branches for SMP-tuned, and single
processor-tuned code. IE SMP is only in some subroutines that replace its
single processor equivalents - so these are to some extent interchangeable
objects.
My knowledge on Bob's releases of Crafty is to give budding programmers a
head start in tinkering with various chess algorithms to see how they can
compare in terms of playing strength, as well as giving us chess-players a
fantastic chess-engine for analysis and tactical error checking.
From my point of view SMP source code is not crucial for my needs - as a
chess player, not a programmer. If I had a dual processor machine - I could
obtain a binary for it from Bob's site. The source code to me is
meaningless.
For the chess programmer - would making the SMP code available be of
benefit - since I saw the Crafty principle was to provide a programmer with
a base they could build from - I believe more focus is needed on AI and
heuristics for improving playing performance - we haven't exhausted all
ideas there.
I think providing binary-only versions of SMP-coded Crafty is the best way
to go (since SMP for Crafty is akin to a patent). That will protect Crafty's
rights as a chess program in the short-term future. I'd guess the vast
majority of us chess players will not be in a position to use SMP programs
yet - that sounds like specialised harware to me!
I'm saddened to see Crafty being mercilessly cloned, and seeing how GnuChess
has stagnated (I've not seen a newer version than 4.0 pl77 thus far) I hope
Crafty won't fall into the same abyss.
IMO SMP will only be a short-term result maker, and long term playing
strength improvements will reside in analysis and move generation algorithms
based on simulated intuition - such as AI. Let the chess programmers
concentrate on software improvements, rather than adapting to new hardware.
Hardware only makes the program run faster, not smarter?
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c5vot$i0v$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>As I said, _no_ decision has been made. And there are alternatives to
>any sort of penalty. IE I can provide linux, solaris and irix executables
>easily. And possibly RS6000, HP and alpha as well. So the problem won't
>be 'penalizing' anyone. But nothing has been decided yet.
>
>:> I'm open to suggestions. I had hoped that 'morality' would work, but
>:> was disappointed there. But I'm all ears for suggestions on how to
control
>:> this 'problem'.
>:>
>:> IE one person privately suggested that maybe I release the serial source
code
>:> normally, but have a much stronger license agreement for the SMP
version, to
>:> provide better controls. But somehow that sounds like it won't work in
the
>:> current 'environment'.
Why not? Who could complain? And if someone does complain, what possible
legal grounds could they have? Bob, the intellectual capital is yours -
AFAIK nobody can force you to release your own code to the rest of the
world. You have done us a huge favour by releasing all your source code.
I guess you could restrict the distribution of the SMP code to developers
that have corresponded with you in improving Crafty in the past, and allow
the rest of the world binaries only. But a tighter licensing scheme looks to
be essential now that 'morality' has failed.
Hope that helps.
Iso
Robert Hyatt
: I'm following this thread as best I can. Don't have any technical insight
yes and no. You would be _astounded_ at how little money you can spend to
put together a dual PII/400 type machine. Perhaps 500 bucks more than you
would spend for a newer PII/450. And that dual 400 offers effectively 800
mhz of processor speed...
: I'm saddened to see Crafty being mercilessly cloned, and seeing how GnuChess
: has stagnated (I've not seen a newer version than 4.0 pl77 thus far) I hope
: Crafty won't fall into the same abyss.
Little chance of that. My wife has finally concluded that I will probably
be doing this until I die. Of course I had told her that many times over
our 30+ years together. :)
: IMO SMP will only be a short-term result maker, and long term playing
: strength improvements will reside in analysis and move generation algorithms
: based on simulated intuition - such as AI. Let the chess programmers
: concentrate on software improvements, rather than adapting to new hardware.
: Hardware only makes the program run faster, not smarter?
Faster is a form of smarter. IE programs have come a long way in 10
years. But how much from cute algorithms and how much from amazing
hardware speedups? I'd bet more on the latter...
: Why not? Who could complain? And if someone does complain, what possible
: legal grounds could they have? Bob, the intellectual capital is yours -
: AFAIK nobody can force you to release your own code to the rest of the
: world. You have done us a huge favour by releasing all your source code.
: I guess you could restrict the distribution of the SMP code to developers
: that have corresponded with you in improving Crafty in the past, and allow
: the rest of the world binaries only. But a tighter licensing scheme looks to
: be essential now that 'morality' has failed.
: Hope that helps.
: Iso
thanks... still an 'open question'...
Anders Thulin
Gareth McCaughan <gj...@dpmms.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>So you're penalising Crafty users who happen not to be running
>either Windows or Linux? I'm not entirely convinced by this...
Proportions are a bit out of whack here, I think.
First, Crafty is available, both in binary and in source form. Huge
bonus, in my opinion.
Now, there's a minor problem with SMP code.
Not having access to SMP, and not being very much interested in it,
I may be underestimating the problem, but it does not seem to reduce
the original bonus to zero, as you seem to think. Am I underestimating
the problem?
>In which case, I suggest that code with such subtle bugs in it
>is worse than useless for your educational purpose in making
>Crafty available in the first place.
Crafty is intended to teach multiprogramming?
Minix (operating system by Andrew Tanenbaum intended for educational
purposes) was pretty bugridden in the first releases. It didn't stop
students of operating system design and implementation and others
enthusiasts from discovering the problems, assessing them, and
applying corrections. Bugs, problems, inefficiencies and just plain
'is it really so' questions probably provide more motivation to
students for studying, learning, testing, fixing than what amounts to
dogma and sterile truth.
Training is one thing; education another.
If we're going to judge crafty on its bugs, it probably should not
have been released in the first place, even for demonstrating chess
programming. Full of subtle and not-so-subtle bugs it was. Just read
the comments in main.c ...
Better shut down shop altogether, then ... ;-)
--
Anders Thulin Anders....@telia.se 013-23 55 32
Telia ProSoft AB, Teknikringen 6, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden
Gareth McCaughan
[I said:]
>> So you're penalising Crafty users who happen not to be running
>> either Windows or Linux? I'm not entirely convinced by this...
>
> Proportions are a bit out of whack here, I think.
>
> First, Crafty is available, both in binary and in source form. Huge
> bonus, in my opinion.
>
> Now, there's a minor problem with SMP code.
>
> Not having access to SMP, and not being very much interested in it,
> I may be underestimating the problem, but it does not seem to reduce
> the original bonus to zero, as you seem to think. Am I underestimating
> the problem?
No, not at all. And I certainly didn't intend to suggest that
releasing code with known bugs in "reduces the original bonus
to zero". A freely available Crafty with some obscure bugs in
the SMP search is vastly better than no free Crafty at all.
>> In which case, I suggest that code with such subtle bugs in it
>> is worse than useless for your educational purpose in making
>> Crafty available in the first place.
>
> Crafty is intended to teach multiprogramming?
It's intended to teach chess programming (among other purposes).
That's explicitly stated by Bob Hyatt, unless I'm misremembering.
> Minix (operating system by Andrew Tanenbaum intended for educational
> purposes) was pretty bugridden in the first releases. It didn't stop
> students of operating system design and implementation and others
> enthusiasts from discovering the problems, assessing them, and
> applying corrections. Bugs, problems, inefficiencies and just plain
> 'is it really so' questions probably provide more motivation to
> students for studying, learning, testing, fixing than what amounts to
> dogma and sterile truth.
Yes, that's certainly true. I just think this gets distorted if you
know that the author has put, or left, bugs there on purpose. Maybe
I'm wrong.
> If we're going to judge crafty on its bugs, it probably should not
> have been released in the first place, even for demonstrating chess
> programming. Full of subtle and not-so-subtle bugs it was. Just read
> the comments in main.c ...
Nonononono, I'm not proposing to "judge Crafty on its bugs" at all.
(If it's to be judged at all, it should be judged on the quality
of its chess-playing and the clarity of its code. It scores just fine
on both.)
And I wouldn't be surprised if there are still plenty of subtle
bugs. I just think it's wrong to release code with known bugs in it.
This is largely a matter of moral scruples, I suppose; but I do
think the "counter-educational" effects of known bugs (perhaps I
should say "of known known bugs", since most of the point is that
people reading the code will know that Dr Hyatt has left some bugs
in) are worse than the counter-educational effects of unknown ones,
all else being equal.
It occurs to me that there's another (probably minor) adverse
effect of keeping bugs in your software: it might discourage you
from improving that part of it -- after all, it wouldn't do if
you ended up having to take the bug out. :-)
> Better shut down shop altogether, then ... ;-)
That would be a very great shame.
CATSoft Software Solutions
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Lines: 371
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.241.57.163
You QUOTE 368 lines to add a pathetic 3 lines - you asshole !
CATSoft Software Solutions
> Shut up. Is this bad netiquette too?
You are a FUCKING ASSHOLE who can't grasp simple concepts such as
quoting in context. Learn to walk before you run.
CATSoft Software Solutions
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 13:52:40 EST
> Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 12:50:03 -0600
> Lines: 199
> Xref: newspeer.clara.net rec.games.chess.computer:71055
You really have no fucking idea how to cut and paste do you.
CATSoft Software Solutions
> "Chris Whittington" <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >To get Crafty (unless you buy it from Chessbase) you need
> >a modem. To get most other chess programs you need a mailing address, or
> >shoes to get to the local store.
>
> >CSTal, by contrast, on those occasions when we make a new version,
>
>
> >>Those are important questions, because I think it will help the readers
> >>understand to what extent the controversty is about "the principle of the
> >>thing" versus money.
>
> >I rather tend to see myself as an 'amateur' chess programmer who argues with
> >Bob about philosophical issues related to bean-counting or whatever. So the
> >main impact of Crafty on me is that the time spent on writing posts detracts
> >from getting on with other, probably more important, work. Probably this
> >costs Bob time as well. Presumably we argue because we are nuts.
>
>
> > Actually, I
> >had an interesting chat with another programmer some weeks ago, where we
> >both admitted that we posted mostly during those times in the development
> >cycle where our programs were being mostly tested. Like small program change
> >that takes 30 minutes is followed by long test cycle that takes 24 hours. So
> >we have 23:30 hours daily minus sleep, family, eating, getting on with life
> >etc for Bob-bashing on the net.
>
>
> Brilliant !
>
> >The
> >chess program industry is a bit like those old balsa-wood aeroplane model
> >shops - sidelined and covered in dust, and hardly anybody except anoraks
> >ever go there.
>
>
Brown-nosing again I see.
CATSoft Software Solutions
> >too, just so long as they don't make commercial exploitation until they get
> >are), or subjected to attack by newsgroup (they are).
> >
> >In essence, it seems to me, that the entire copyleft process, Bob's source
> >code releases and so on are naive mechanisms, the kind of utopian ideas
> >developed by immature students. Faced with the real world and its villains,
> >Bob and Gnu just look foolish. And the mess created impacts on the rest of
> >us.
> >
> >I think Bob should just allow independent development of Crafty, try and get
> >any developers to police themselves by extending his family support group
> >system to include them, and be pleased if they come up with something
> >stronger. Meanwhile the rest of the programmers should accept that the
> >solution of force of control measures needed to police away Crafty
> >problem.
> >
> >Chris Whittington
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>Dusan Dobes
> >>
> >>: Chris Whittington
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Chris,
>
> After reading a number of your posts, let me ask some questions. It's difficult
> for me to understand, especially without much knowledge of the history
> involved, to what extent you might be pissed off because Crafty simply impacts
> the bottom line of CSTal. Let me ask you directly then: Do you think the fact
> that Crafty is publically available impacts the money you might make from CSTal
> in any way? If so, how?
>
> understand to what extent the controversty is about "the principle of the
> business, and so on, and so on, and in your message which started this thread,
> might draw the conclusion that Crafty impacts your business, and that the
> arguments over principle are really just a smokescreen about money. And money,
> of course, is one of the things that people "get personal" about.
>
> money, if you can offer a product that has incremental value in the
> because Crafty or one of its derivatives, especially in a GUI-ed form, might
> Bob are probably similar to how Bill Gates feels about Linus Torvalds, though
> the analogy isn't exact, of course.
>
>
Annoying innnit - got nothing to say but since it seems the be the "thing" to do
in this NG - that is to quote ad infinitum I thought I would join in. I guess we
can keep this recursive thing going for a while.
Der Ubermensch
> You are a FUCKING ASSHOLE who can't grasp simple concepts such as
> quoting in context. Learn to walk before you run.
Cool it, puppy dog.
Der Ubermensch
> You QUOTE 368 lines to add a pathetic 3 lines - you asshole !
Cool it, puppy dog.
User
> > Shut up. Is this bad netiquette too?
>
> quoting in context. Learn to walk before you run.
I bet you make friends easily.
Do you really think anyone is reading your posts anymore?
I know you will be in my killfile in about 5 seconds.
Grow up.
CATSoft Software Solutions
> I bet you make friends easily.
Not with fucking assholes.
> Do you really think anyone is reading your posts anymore?
> I know you will be in my killfile in about 5 seconds.
You will have to try harder next time, the follow-up was a little lame.
Scott Rutter
<ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>people, although they don't seem to have much presence.. Crafty is very
>specialised, you need quite a deal of computer savvy to get it working
>properly. So it 'competes' in a relatively high-knowledge niche market.
Implication - (CSTal good, Crafty Bad.) Actually, not counting download
times, I had Crafty running with Winboard within 5 mins of starting.
It only takes changing 2 lines in the Winboard.ini file. I didn't realize
that reading one page of the winboard help file and using a text editor was
a "high-knowledge" activity. Guess all those college courses paid off.
>primary developer. To get Crafty (unless you buy it from Chessbase) you need
>a modem. To get most other chess programs you need a mailing address, or
>shoes to get to the local store.
I hardly see the challenge imposed by the requirements listed. If someone
buys a computer they would have to spend some time and effort to get one
withOUT a modem. And if you are without a mailing address and shoes you
are hardly likely to be using a computer to play chess, free program or not.
>
>CSTal, by contrast, on those occasions when we make a new version, which is
>not often, sells for a few dollars into the entertainment software
>distribution business. It then gets sold on to retailers and finally
>end-users. We sell a few copies direct to resellers, and a few direct to
>end-users, but no big deal. All this actually accounts for only a very small
>proportion of the business here. Mostly we are working on engine ports,
>licences, GUI development, console development, new product development and
>so on, mostly, but not entirely, in areas outside of chess. In other words,
>our trade with endusers is negligable compared to our trade with other
>companies around the world.
Since you aren't making any money from your game, you are hardly likely
to be in active support and development of it. Don't take that as an
insult, you are in the business of making money, and it only makes sense
to spend your resources where it will maximize your profit. Freeware on
the other hand is often a thing of personal pride to the programmer, they
will spend incredible amounts of time and effort tinkering, upgrading,
debugging and improving the product.
>Presumably we argue because we are nuts.
I'm hardly qualified to venture an opinion as to the mental states of
Bob and yourself, however it is very entertaining to watch. Thank you
for doing so in a public forum. :)
>the chess development community. If nobody charges for this program, then
>engine programmers, interface developers, people with ideas all lose, no ?
I hardly see how providing a free engine makes other people "lose".
Its the free enterprise system in action, you have to be able to provide
the best product at the best price. If you can't make any money in the
market, it isn't the fault of the competition. (Feel free to correct me
if I'm wrong, but am I correct in understanding that Chesswars used the
GNU engine? If so they weren't in competition with you when the makers
of Chesswars stole the engine and violated the user license by including
it in a commercial product.)
>
>Gnu, as far as I can tell, seems to be a program that has all control over
>it lost. That's bad news.
That's always a problem, they wouldn't have nearly enough money to
hire the army of lawyers they would need to defend all the violations.
However, that doesn't make it morally or legally acceptable to steal the
work of others.
>
>Crafty has plenty of control over it. It is directly and forcefully defended
>by Bob and Bruce at times as well. My argument was actually to release some
>of the control, so that young programmers could work on, develop, and
>improve Crafty.
They are free to do so, just as Robert is free to define limits on how far
that development is to occur in a commercial sense. Many people here keep
talking about how much you need to change before the code becomes "yours".
It would be legally acceptable to require a credit for ANY derivative of
crafty, even if it got to the point of 100% original code. If you want
a chess engine without any Crafty credit, write your own, from scratch.
I'm using the DikuMud source as a precedent here, that is a code base
that was designed to be improved and modified upon, with strict limitations
on proper crediting and commercial use.
>Bob's. My argument was for Bob to let go. Part of my reasoning is (was)
>that, if Bob holds very tightly onto Crafty, then, for sure, there will be
>people working to develop it secretly, hiding the source, encoding it,
>changing it in ways that can't be detected. These versions may then become
>commercial product. It's that kind of illicit spread that I urged Bob to
>deal with by relaxing his terms, and thus, in effect having *more* control,
>by reducing the incentive for others to cheat. He won't change, so.
Any control short of a personal death squad wouldn't be enough to stop
people from trying this. They do it because they can, and they don't give
one bit of concern about the legality of doing so. Anyone going to this
much effort to steal the work of another is hardly likely to be deterred by
a user license.
>means. And if we do get there, and developers have no alternative ways to
>get funds, then that'll be the end of chess engine development.
Really? Are you sure? I didn't send Robert any money, someone else
must have paid for me. Whoever you are, drop me a note, I'd like to
thank you.
>
>More likely is that the Internet will eliminate resellers and distributors,
>so that you can buy direct from primary producers at low prices. Or, direct
>from huge mail-order houses at low mark ups (amazon.com). You are aware that
>most goods that sell in retail for $100, probably cost about $5 to make ?
>That primary producers sell into distribution at 35% of the retail price ?
>
>So by the time Bob can have world-wide distribution of Crafty into every
>home in the world (and he'll need a GUI for that), commercial products,
You sure like to harp on the fact that Crafty has no GUI. Like a GUI is
that much of a challenge, and it would be a duplication of effort anyway.
Why write a separate application when you can get an excellent GUI for free.
He'd be hard pressed to keep Crafty and a GUI in development by himself,
considering how well WinBoard development has progressed.
>
>I doubt Gates loses a second of sleep over it. Everything moves very fast in
>this industry, it's not about fighting old battles, but seeking out new
>ideas and opportunities. Who has the strongest, fastest, bestest chess
>engine and interface and and and is yesterdays news. They all beat you
>anyway, no ? The battle is over in the mass-mind after DB-Kasparov, no ? The
>chess program industry is a bit like those old balsa-wood aeroplane model
>shops - sidelined and covered in dust, and hardly anybody except anoraks
>ever go there.
>
>
>Chris Whittington
>
Why all this effort and debate if the entire matter means nothing to you?
Chat at ya later,
Scott Rutter
On Sat, 6 Mar 1999 13:30:35 -0000, "Chris Whittington"
<ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>people, although they don't seem to have much presence.. Crafty is very
>specialised, you need quite a deal of computer savvy to get it working
>properly. So it 'competes' in a relatively high-knowledge niche market.
Implication - (CSTal good, Crafty Bad.) Actually, not counting download
times, I had Crafty running with Winboard within 5 mins of starting.
It only takes changing 2 lines in the Winboard.ini file. I didn't realize
that reading one page of the winboard help file and using a text editor was
a "high-knowledge" activity. Guess all those college courses paid off.
>primary developer. To get Crafty (unless you buy it from Chessbase) you need
>a modem. To get most other chess programs you need a mailing address, or
>shoes to get to the local store.
I hardly see the challenge imposed by the requirements listed. If someone
buys a computer they would have to spend some time and effort to get one
withOUT a modem. And if you are without a mailing address and shoes you
are hardly likely to be using a computer to play chess, free program or not.
>
>CSTal, by contrast, on those occasions when we make a new version, which is
>not often, sells for a few dollars into the entertainment software
>distribution business. It then gets sold on to retailers and finally
>end-users. We sell a few copies direct to resellers, and a few direct to
>end-users, but no big deal. All this actually accounts for only a very small
>proportion of the business here. Mostly we are working on engine ports,
>licences, GUI development, console development, new product development and
>so on, mostly, but not entirely, in areas outside of chess. In other words,
>our trade with endusers is negligable compared to our trade with other
>companies around the world.
Since you aren't making any money from your game, you are hardly likely
to be in active support and development of it. Don't take that as an
insult, you are in the business of making money, and it only makes sense
to spend your resources where it will maximize your profit. Freeware on
the other hand is often a thing of personal pride to the programmer, they
will spend incredible amounts of time and effort tinkering, upgrading,
debugging and improving the product.
>Presumably we argue because we are nuts.
I'm hardly qualified to venture an opinion as to the mental states of
Bob and yourself, however it is very entertaining to watch. Thank you
for doing so in a public forum. :)
>the chess development community. If nobody charges for this program, then
>engine programmers, interface developers, people with ideas all lose, no ?
I hardly see how providing a free engine makes other people "lose".
Its the free enterprise system in action, you have to be able to provide
the best product at the best price. If you can't make any money in the
market, it isn't the fault of the competition. (Feel free to correct me
if I'm wrong, but am I correct in understanding that Chesswars used the
GNU engine? If so they weren't in competition with you when the makers
of Chesswars stole the engine and violated the user license by including
it in a commercial product.)
>
>Gnu, as far as I can tell, seems to be a program that has all control over
>it lost. That's bad news.
That's always a problem, they wouldn't have nearly enough money to
hire the army of lawyers they would need to defend all the violations.
However, that doesn't make it morally or legally acceptable to steal the
work of others.
>
>Crafty has plenty of control over it. It is directly and forcefully defended
>by Bob and Bruce at times as well. My argument was actually to release some
>of the control, so that young programmers could work on, develop, and
>improve Crafty.
They are free to do so, just as Robert is free to define limits on how far
that development is to occur in a commercial sense. Many people here keep
talking about how much you need to change before the code becomes "yours".
It would be legally acceptable to require a credit for ANY derivative of
crafty, even if it got to the point of 100% original code. If you want
a chess engine without any Crafty credit, write your own, from scratch.
I'm using the DikuMud source as a precedent here, that is a code base
that was designed to be improved and modified upon, with strict limitations
on proper crediting and commercial use.
>Bob's. My argument was for Bob to let go. Part of my reasoning is (was)
>that, if Bob holds very tightly onto Crafty, then, for sure, there will be
>people working to develop it secretly, hiding the source, encoding it,
>changing it in ways that can't be detected. These versions may then become
>commercial product. It's that kind of illicit spread that I urged Bob to
>deal with by relaxing his terms, and thus, in effect having *more* control,
>by reducing the incentive for others to cheat. He won't change, so.
Any control short of a personal death squad wouldn't be enough to stop
people from trying this. They do it because they can, and they don't give
one bit of concern about the legality of doing so. Anyone going to this
much effort to steal the work of another is hardly likely to be deterred by
a user license.
>means. And if we do get there, and developers have no alternative ways to
>get funds, then that'll be the end of chess engine development.
Really? Are you sure? I didn't send Robert any money, someone else
must have paid for me. Whoever you are, drop me a note, I'd like to
thank you.
>
>More likely is that the Internet will eliminate resellers and distributors,
>so that you can buy direct from primary producers at low prices. Or, direct
>from huge mail-order houses at low mark ups (amazon.com). You are aware that
>most goods that sell in retail for $100, probably cost about $5 to make ?
>That primary producers sell into distribution at 35% of the retail price ?
>
>So by the time Bob can have world-wide distribution of Crafty into every
>home in the world (and he'll need a GUI for that), commercial products,
You sure like to harp on the fact that Crafty has no GUI. Like a GUI is
that much of a challenge, and it would be a duplication of effort anyway.
Why write a separate application when you can get an excellent GUI for free.
He'd be hard pressed to keep Crafty and a GUI in development by himself,
considering how well WinBoard development has progressed.
>
>I doubt Gates loses a second of sleep over it. Everything moves very fast in
>this industry, it's not about fighting old battles, but seeking out new
>ideas and opportunities. Who has the strongest, fastest, bestest chess
>engine and interface and and and is yesterdays news. They all beat you
>anyway, no ? The battle is over in the mass-mind after DB-Kasparov, no ? The
>chess program industry is a bit like those old balsa-wood aeroplane model
>shops - sidelined and covered in dust, and hardly anybody except anoraks
>ever go there.
>
>
>Chris Whittington
>
Why all this effort and debate if the entire matter means nothing to you?
Chat at ya later,
Scott Rutter
Robert Hyatt
: On Sat, 6 Mar 1999 13:30:35 -0000, "Chris Whittington"
: <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
:>people, although they don't seem to have much presence.. Crafty is very
:>specialised, you need quite a deal of computer savvy to get it working
:>properly. So it 'competes' in a relatively high-knowledge niche market.
: Implication - (CSTal good, Crafty Bad.) Actually, not counting download
: times, I had Crafty running with Winboard within 5 mins of starting.
: It only takes changing 2 lines in the Winboard.ini file. I didn't realize
: that reading one page of the winboard help file and using a text editor was
: a "high-knowledge" activity. Guess all those college courses paid off.
You would _not_ believe the number of queries I get when I log on to ICC.
And when I suggest the 'read.me' I get "that takes too long". When I point
out it is only 180 lines (3 pages) I get an "oh" which shows that they had
not looked at it, period...
:>primary developer. To get Crafty (unless you buy it from Chessbase) you need
:>a modem. To get most other chess programs you need a mailing address, or
:>shoes to get to the local store.
: I hardly see the challenge imposed by the requirements listed. If someone
: buys a computer they would have to spend some time and effort to get one
: withOUT a modem. And if you are without a mailing address and shoes you
: are hardly likely to be using a computer to play chess, free program or not.
:>
:>CSTal, by contrast, on those occasions when we make a new version, which is
:>not often, sells for a few dollars into the entertainment software
:>distribution business. It then gets sold on to retailers and finally
:>end-users. We sell a few copies direct to resellers, and a few direct to
:>end-users, but no big deal. All this actually accounts for only a very small
:>proportion of the business here. Mostly we are working on engine ports,
:>licences, GUI development, console development, new product development and
:>so on, mostly, but not entirely, in areas outside of chess. In other words,
:>our trade with endusers is negligable compared to our trade with other
:>companies around the world.
: Since you aren't making any money from your game, you are hardly likely
: to be in active support and development of it. Don't take that as an
: insult, you are in the business of making money, and it only makes sense
: to spend your resources where it will maximize your profit. Freeware on
: the other hand is often a thing of personal pride to the programmer, they
: will spend incredible amounts of time and effort tinkering, upgrading,
: debugging and improving the product.
My wife heartily agrees... with the 'incredible amounts of time part...'
:)
:>Presumably we argue because we are nuts.
Engine 'development' started _before_ commercial chess programs existed,
so that argument is false anyway. And we have a bright group of freeware
guys that are actively developing engines right and left. I suspect it
will continue, as it has...
:>
:>More likely is that the Internet will eliminate resellers and distributors,
:>so that you can buy direct from primary producers at low prices. Or, direct
:>from huge mail-order houses at low mark ups (amazon.com). You are aware that
:>most goods that sell in retail for $100, probably cost about $5 to make ?
:>That primary producers sell into distribution at 35% of the retail price ?
:>
:>So by the time Bob can have world-wide distribution of Crafty into every
:>home in the world (and he'll need a GUI for that), commercial products,
: You sure like to harp on the fact that Crafty has no GUI. Like a GUI is
: that much of a challenge, and it would be a duplication of effort anyway.
: Why write a separate application when you can get an excellent GUI for free.
: He'd be hard pressed to keep Crafty and a GUI in development by himself,
: considering how well WinBoard development has progressed.
Personally I like winboard/xboard. I wish it had some customizable windows
options so that it would be possible to configure it to access some of the
more esoteric crafty features. But it works well, both as a front end for
Crafty, as a tournament manager for two programs in a match, and for
access to ICC for me _or_ crafty. All in all, _very_ flexible when you
think about it, right?
:>
:>I doubt Gates loses a second of sleep over it. Everything moves very fast in
Jim Eoff
CATSoft Software Solutions
> Which is not nearly as bad as having no class.
And which class would that be, at least I have taken to reading the
various policy documents on Usenet usage. Of course most people just
don't bother to think.
Occasionally, I get rather peeved off, doesn't help when I am pissed!
However, although I may have used some colourful language, which I
apologise for it any offence was cause, the tendancy to just hit the
"reply with full quote" does cause a few problems.
1. When we get the "full blown essay" repeated with some quaint little
one liner I sometimes wonder if it was worth it.
2. Sometimes it is possible to make your point without actually having
to repeat everything all over again.
3. Some people will actually set their newsreader to ignore postings
over 500 lines, so you end up talking to yourself.
Please explain to me the purpose of quoting in it's entirity a 700 line
post just to say "jolly good show, I agree". In my book it just shows
that the "geek" doesn't understand what he/she is doing; or couldn't
care less because they happen to be on a University/Company newsfeed.
However, I have been pissing into this wind for years, nothing changes
so no doubt I will cuss and curse next time I come near the computer
after a few jars too many <vbg>.
Of course, one does have standards you know <sic>