Author: Vasik Rajlich
Date: 08:35:42 05/29/05
Go up one level in this thread
On May 29, 2005 at 08:25:02, Mridul Muralidharan wrote: >On May 28, 2005 at 12:29:33, Günther Simon wrote: > >>On May 28, 2005 at 12:20:00, Vladimir Elin wrote: >> >>>Hi Alex, >>>I think that reason for you to use only engines with open sources and delete >>>all engines were you can see words : alpha, beta, prunning and many many etc. >> >>Vladimir that is really a dumb post after all... >> >>Guenther >> >>>You idea that Patriot 2.0 is clone - full absurd. >>>Best. >>>Vladimir. > >Is it really such a dumb post ? I am not sure - whenever someone mentions >"clone" , I am skeptical - inspite of the number of clones that are discovered. >I prefer to give the author the benifit of doubt - a genourously large benifit >at that. > >Nothing is opensource programs is a "secret" , I mean - even if they were not >opensource , the amateur (and definitely professional) authors will have arrived >(or already have) at them independently : by expiriments or through available >docs. I dont really see any ground breaking code or idea in any of the >opensource engines today - all are straight forward implementations of the >standard theory. > >Most , if not all , clone accusations show as "proof" something really dumb - >like string search , result in a single position , behaviour of a parser (which >is _not_ part of the engine as such people !) , etc - maybe these are the only >possible ways to identify clones (I am not sure - and as I have posted before , >I dont really care much) , but based on such flimsy grounds people should not >accuse others. >When you accuse a program as a clone - you are also maligning the reputation of >the author : which is the more serious thing IMHO. > >What Vladimir Elin is hinting at is that (I think) , people (usually non-chess >engine programmers who know quiet little about the programming aspects) see >something/anything strange (in their eyes) and cry wolf. >Like a string search which returns strings - which might be what is defined in >the pgn spec , or a binary search which returns data match (whcih might be de to >a generated parser for pgn handling for book) , etc ! > >Ofcourse wachful people are always needs to see the hints which will lead to the >identification of many clones , but IMO we need a better way to decide how to >identify clones. > >The current process seems to be : 1) Accuse 2) Flame 3) Author defends 4) >mudslinging 5) Nasty posts - brining the author's whole family history to the >ground 6) Challenge (to show source) 7) If 6 accepted , cleared , else branded >as clone. > I dont know about others, but no I am never going to send my source code to >someone I dont personally trust - even if the rest of the computer chess >community might seem to. >Not everyone knows what the non-opensource guys are doing in their code : and >personally I do many a stupid things , but I might have something interesting >too :) > >So why have opensource engines ? - different question anyway , we wont discuss >that since it is largely an authors decision. > >We should try to promote the number of amateur engines so that as many people as >possible should enter this field - not discourage people. (both within >reasonable limits ofcourse) > >Mridul Mridul -- First of all, your post makes me wonder if you are familiar with the Patriot 2.0 situation, but anyway those things are boring for me so let's talk philosophy for a second :) I've had the good or maybe bad luck to spend at least 3 years living in five different countries, and I can make a certain observation. In two of these countries - USA and Germany - society essentially works. Wages are decent, crime is kept down, things just work. In three of these countries - Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland - no offense intended to anyone, but they just don't work as well. People steal from the government without getting punished, people cheat on their jobs, nobody is willing to deal with various problems, etc. What's the difference? A huge difference is that in Germany and USA, people essentially care. If they see something wrong, they report it and attempt to rectify it. This goes from cleaning up a small mess on the road, to calling the police if the neighbor is beating his family, etc. Throughout Eastern Europe, people are apathetic - and everybody suffers as a result. Sometimes, it can seem a bit too much. I remember I had this impression when I first came to the US - why is everybody so concerned with things that aren't their business. In the overall picture, though, society is better for it. So I certainly appreciate that there are people who are going to look into these things and do something about it, rather than just endlessly holding their tongue for fear of being out of line. Without it, computer chess will just be a mess. Vas
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