Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 13:50:31 01/24/99
Go up one level in this thread
On January 24, 1999 at 14:04:26, Ed Schröder wrote: >>>If people pick Crafty's sources, make their own changes and give >>>the program an own name then that's perfectly legal. Adding all >>>kind of demands to the license agreement are not necessarily >>>binding. > >>baloney on two points. Freeware licenses have stood up in court already. >>The GPL from project GNU is quite well-known. for the second point, try to >>enter a 'slightly modified copy of a freeware program' into an ACM or WCCC >>event. That won't happen. The rules have forbid this since the very early >>days. > >Just took a look at your sources I once have downloaded. I noticed >there is no license agreement or copyright statement at all? > >How can people know about the legal status? > First, look at the top of main.c.. the copyright notice is right at the top, and has been there since it was first released. Second, I'd think most people could figure out that you can just 'lift' something written by someone else and claim it as your own work. That's called plagerism. If you took any sort of English/Writing/Grammer courses in college, you were taught that when you take something 'verbatim' from another author you _must_ cite the source and original author _every time_. _no_ exceptions... I'd assume everyone has that basic training in writing? IE my son had this in 10th/11th/12th grade in high school. > >>>As far as I understand Dutch law it is perfectly legal to pick >>>Crafty's source-code, make changes, build an own GUI and >>>sell it. This might differ from country to country I don't know. > >>>The only thing Bob has a right to demand is that it should be >>>forbidden to release a 100% exact copy of the freeware >>>sources and give it a new name and/or sell it. > >>>I don't understand all the fuss about this topic. Many programs >>>are based on the GNU freeware sources. Never saw discussions >>>like this. Why is the GNU status different than Crafty status? > > > >>Maybe if you would enter Rebel in one of these tournaments, you might >>'change your tune'. Ie would you _really_ want to play today's crafty >>at a 3:1 time handicap? I don't think so. But you would have to if the >>tournament allows multiple cpus like the Dutch event. And you'd be sitting >>there playing a program with a very good chance of beating you, with that >>program using something the authors probably don't even understand how it >>works (the parallel search). > >You did not answer the question. The topic is Bionic and the supposed >fraud. Sofar I wasn't able to find anything in your sources that covers >your claims. > go to main.c if you are talking about the copyright notice. I include it here for the record:: * Crafty, copyrighted 1996 by Robert M. Hyatt, Ph.D., Associate Professor * * of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham. * * * * All rights reserved. No part of this program may be reproduced in any * * form or by any means, for any commercial (for profit/sale) reasons. This * * program may be freely distributed, used, and modified, so long as such use * * does not in any way result in the sale of all or any part of the source, * * the executables, or other distributed materials that are a part of this * * package. any changes made to this program must also be made public in * * the spirit that the original source is distributed. * You should find that at the top of any version you have, hopefully... but only in main.c... > >>Seem reasonable, now? I never intended to release something that >>would be used to bash other programs in this way.. > >Fine. Then make it very clear in a license agreement or copyright >notice. Sofar I haven't seen anything. see above... > > > >>>As for tournaments, Crafty or GNU clones should be allowed >>>from the juridical point of view as simple as that. I can imagine >>>organizers might decide otherwise but they are taking a risk >>>concerning the juridical point of view. Freeware is freeware. In >>>the Crafty / GNU case all ideas behind the program are made >>>public so everybody is allowed to use it. You can not publish >>>your ideas in the newspaper and say, "I don't want you to >>>use it". > > > >>Sure you can. You can publish "anything" and still prevent it from being >>taken 'word for word'. I believe that would be called plagarism? Taking >>the 'ideas' from crafty was the point of releasing it. _not_ taking 99% of >>the code, adding a few eval changes, and then using that in a computer chess >>event. IE the WCCC in Paderborn is not going to allow such an entry... The >>rules have _always_ not allowed such, and they have tightened them this year >>to be sure this doesn't get out of control... > >Say it too in the license agreement. > > >>I don't mind anybody doing anything to crafty, and using it however they want, >>but it does _not_ seem fair to take something no one else has, with _zero_ >>effort (the parallel search) and then use that to roll over programs that have >>a lot of time invested by the programmers working on them. That's what started >>this discussion _during_ the tournament.. and that has been my point ever since. >>I don't think anyone minds playing "crafty" in a tournament. But they should >>object to having 5 in the same event. Because the odds are that 'crafty' is >>going to win having 5 chances out of N. That I call 'unfair' odds. Which was >>the same reason many protested "gunda-1' in the Jakarta event. > >Add rules for this it too in the license agreement. > >Kind regards, > >Ed Schroder If the Bionic guys had made their source publicly available as the comments above mentions, this would all be 'moot'. We could run their version, and make sure it plays exactly the same as the verion in the Dutch tourney. They we could run it and compare the results to crafty. If they are significantly different, one issue is 'moot.' But the part about outright taking my search code unchanged and using that in a second program seems a bit much... because to do that, you end up taking 20,000 lines of code, at least, since they _have_ to use my rotated bitmaps, my search, my parallel thread code, and so forth. And that is a _bunch_ of code to take as their own... that was _my_ issue... notice I didn't start the bionic thread this time or last time. I simply tossed in my $.02, just as I did in the big Gunda-1 thread of two years ago. It ought _not_ happen. Most normal computer chess tournaments expressly forbid this. The Dutch tournament didn't.
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