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Subject: Re: Bionic Vs Crafty Debate: some data required

Author: Fernando Villegas

Date: 13:38:05 01/25/99

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On January 25, 1999 at 16:06:57, Dann Corbit wrote:

>The program is known to be a clone, in fact the web site acknowleges as much.
>As far as how much was changed, the only way to know is either:
>1.  Trust the one who changed it to tell you
>2.  Look at the changes yourself (if made public)
>
>Depending on how two different opening books were prepared, crafty will play
>very differently.  I could easily change one or two things in the eval function
>by 1% and make crafty play different moves once in a while.  Just running some
>games won't be much of a demonstration one way or the other.


That's precisely what I have said. The example of the queen value in CM6000,
etc. But at the end what we have here is a  debate about what is the parameter
to define the change of a thing to another thing, in the first place. If
perfomance is the answer, then even the more insignificant code change that
affects dramatically the perfomance could be considered as enough to talk of
another program. Sound weird, but is logical. And if the change of the source
code is the parameter, then, as Ulrich said, emerges the fantastic problem of
how much is or not an autentic change.
My point of view is that, no matter how much ugly is to use work made by another
people, if that work is public and so is part of the general available resources
of the community, then it can be used and changed as you wish and it is not your
problem if other guys are not using it because they prefer to start from
scratch. This last people can say that is not fair to compete in that way, but
that is ridiculous. May I blame a guy that compete with a car that has the
conventional 4 times engine and 4 wheels if I try to win the race with a bike
with a washing machine engine? Every guy can use and change Crafty engine as
every guy can use and change the already known alfa-beta techniques or whatever.
Creafty is part of the universal knowledge of chess programming thanks to the
generosity of Bob and the fact that Bob is not a photo in an encyclopedia or a
note in a biography of genuses, but a real being that chat with us, does not
change a bit the things.  Yes, maybe we can blame the authors of Bionic for
supporting too much his creature in the arms of Bob, but, again, how much is too
much?
Fernando



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