Author: Peter Haupert
Date: 05:57:12 01/24/99
Go up one level in this thread
On January 24, 1999 at 01:02:08, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On January 23, 1999 at 11:52:41, Frank Quisinsky wrote: > >>Hello, >> >>sorry for my bad english. >> >>I don't understand the excitement. >> >>I have played over 400 games with Crafty. A very beautiful program. Compliment >>Mister Hyatt, also for your informative contributions in the Newsgroups. >> >>The Source code of Crafty is free. >> >>Other programmers use this code and that, OK is. Or why the code is free! >> > >the code is 'free' so that the things done in crafty can be seen and used as >examples of things to try, things not to try, etc. But that is a _far_ cry from >taking a program that is pretty mature, and entering a slightly modified version >of it in a tournament where the other participants spent their many man-hours of >work to write their own code, And then they run into a program that is 2x >faster than theirs because that program uses a parallel search developed by >someone else. > >That was my major problem with the Dutch championship. To take crafty as a >starting point to modify is fine. But that was _not_ done. Just compare the >SMP version to the non-SMP version, you will see that someone didn't spend a >year or two making changes to an earlier version and then quickly merge those >changes into 16.x code. It is _not_ that easy. But that isn't even the end >of this, as I would still say it is unreasonable for someone to copy the search >of crafty, in its entirety, along with the parallel stuff, and then use that in >a competition. Or is it ok to modify perhaps 1% of a program (based on >man-hours of work invested in the original development vs the time spent on >changing something here and there) and then use this in a tournament? > >Past ACM and WCCC events have said _no_. I'm happy to see others use crafty as >a starting point for their own development. I'm not so happy to see them then >enter this and compete against those that are doing _original_ computer chess >development. In that case, why not just ask and enter crafty with my >permission, since that is _really_ what is playing anyway? In 1994 a program named "Greif" was distributed in Germany and took part in several tournaments. At the Welser tournament (in Austria) someone found out that it used the source code of "NIMZO 2.xx", from Chrilly Donninger. A few changes were made at the library and a complete new GUI, but Nimzo wasn't freeware at that time, so this case was clear: software piracy! Take "Comet" from Uli Türke. He says that Comet is based at the source code of GNUChess. I think Comet is nowadays a completely autonomous program AND very successful too. GNUChess is freeware and nobody ever would criticize Uli for his good work (go on Uli!). BUT Comet is free/shareware (don't know) too. The things that make it complcate with BIONIC are. 1. They use freeware source code, but their program isn't anywhere to download 2. Mr. Hyatt calls his source code as freeware as an idea for interested guys to make an own program, which normally could be based on this code. 3. Can anybody say how much of a program must be changed to make it an autonomous one? 4. BIONIC is very successful, maybe more than Crafty. I think I can imagine how Mr. Hyatt feels. Hope this case will come to a conclusion! Peter > > > > >>Hans was honestly and admitted to use parts of this code. Are other programmers >>also so honest? >> >>Hans think a very nice human being and I to attack him is not OK !!! >> >>Best wishes >>Frank
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