Author: Severi Salminen
Date: 23:14:06 03/06/01
Go up one level in this thread
>Remember that many people and I are learners, not inventors like many other >people here. Actually, I do not see the diffirence between the learning from >textbooks or the learning from open source codes. I think one of the main >purposes of that codes is for training. "Cut and paste" is also a method of >learning. Some people here want and can invent something new, but some others >will be happy if they could understand only some pieces of your codes. Do not >blame with their happiness or make any over expectation about new inventions >(likely someone is requiring all people must be as smart as him to enter this >field). I'm very sorry if I have offended you as I can see that you really want to know what is happening inside a chess engine. I didn't want to blame _you_ for anything just wanted to raise this question up. And of course source codes can be of valuable information (but IMHO learning AB from sources is not the easiest way...). The only thing I don't like is this copyright issue: takeing credit from someone's work - I just hate that. >I do not believe that we could write **all** our code without learning / >modifying from other codes. Is your QuickSort (or AlphaBeta) algorithm totally >diffirent from all others? Of cource not. And you should have the same answers >with many parts of your codes. Certainly, if you are expert or work for longer >time, your proportion of own codes would be much bigger than the new one's. I have to point out again that I was only talking about directly copying code made by others. I am not, as I have said, talking about algorithms or techniques (as they have not been patented). I don't know what should a QuickSort function do but I have my own implementation of sorting moves - as I really don't know what others do. >And note that in science, people could "cut and paste" any thing with enough >referrent and acknowledgment. Yes and no: they use ideas from other scientists but they do the work themselves. They don't go to other laboratories and say: "I'd like to have your medicine you have been working on 5 years.". This same goes form most of open sources: at least TSCP and Crafty are copyrighted (you also should check these notifications, just to be sure). Actually you can't use anything directly from these sources without author's permission. But I guess that they _will_ give you permission as long as the part of the code you'd like to copy is not too big. >I do not agree with somebody here about cutting off all free source codes. This >would make benefit for few people who have commercial software but slow down the >progress of science and reduce the number of potential people, who could >contribute to it. (If there is not any open source codes like Crafty and others, >the popular of this club would be drop dramatically). I like the current balance >of commercial and free software and more people are getting benefit. I was talking about cutting off all _complete_ sources. So that people could not download Crafty, alter piece_square values, rename program name and compile it takeing credit fom that. But it is true that this would also harm the popularity of this field and that would not be good. Maybe we just have to live with these occasional: "My program Prafty beats all! I'm the king of the world" But Pham Minh Tri: just keep on going! Allways good to have new programmers here! Severi "just a humble peasant" Salminen
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