Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 14:35:48 08/25/04
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On August 25, 2004 at 15:58:11, GeoffW wrote: >Hello > >Without studying the code I have a very simple viewpoint. Where exactly in any >of the Chinito documentation, start up banner, Web page infomormation did you >say thanks to Robert Hyatt for his Crafty code ? Where did you give an >acknowledgement to the fact that El Chinito was derived from Crafty ? >Without complying with the above points, my personal opinion is zero duplicate >code is acceptable. > >Having got burned in a slightly similar situation myself a little while back I >will probably get accused of being hypocritcal. I did however acknowledge the >starting program and say thanks to the author. > >Just my thoughts for what they are worth, boils down to a matter of courtesy, or >lack thereof. > > Geoff A note. Apparently he did _exactly_ what I had intended when I originally released the source, namely that someone would take the working version, replace some signficant component with custom code, and use that as a testbed for the new ideas he/she was working on. Based on an email from the author, that is what happened here. However, as we know, things went a bit wrong later on because it becomes too easy to say "OK, I modified an important part (IE I replaced the normal alpha/beta search with a variant of Berliner's SSS* search) and now this "thing" is something new that I have done." That's a really grey area, obviously. If the new search worked (he apparently did some new search ideas, although not SSS*, that was just an example) then the reasonable next action would be to write his own evaluation and so forth and then he has something new that is his. And he defers writing the eval until he is sure his search stuff is going to produce reasonable tactics. So, obviously the program has lots of Crafty in it. Too much to participate in computer chess events that require original authorship. However I get the distinct impression that none of this was intended as a "I will grab Crafty, modify it, and claim it as my own unique program hee hee hee..." sort of thing. It was unfortunate, it wasn't the first time, it won't be the last time. We have more than a few more of these running around. Some with SMP search, some without, but all directly derived from Crafty. There are other "signatures" I will reveal over time that point right at the guilty programs. But that will wait for another day. At least here, this seems to be put to rest to my satisfaction, so we can move on until the next revellation. :)
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