Author: KarinsDad
Date: 13:12:47 01/25/99
Go up one level in this thread
On January 25, 1999 at 13:45:00, Robert Hyatt wrote: [snip] >> >>Aside from legal and moral issues, I find confusing the meaning of freeware or >>public domain. Opening books are built from human theory and used by every >>program. I have never seen opening lines in computer games quoted "as in the >>game Karpov-Ivanchuk, Linares '92". Tablebases are widely used too by >>programmers that had nothing to do with their development. These are two quick >>examples of "public domain" used freely (as in free-ware?) by everybody. I >>guess I am being naive. > > >these are not so problematic. IE if you didn't use the 'database data' in a >tablebase, what part would be usable? That's all there is. A better way to put it is that any software (.dlls, .exes, ActiveX controls, etc.) that is placed within the public domain for use can be bundled elsewhere. Any software which is sold for re-bundling can also bundled elsewhere. Tablebases and opening books which are placed on the web as public domain or which are purchased for the purpose of re-bundling (i.e. not for use with a given program as part of the program's kit), can be re-used. An opening book that comes with Fritz cannot be used this way without the permision of the manufacturers of Fritz. > > >> >>There is a famous case in literature. When Thomas Mann published his "Doktor >>Faustus", he was immediately accused of unethical behavior because he put in the >>mouth of Leverkün, one of the main characters, the musical theories of >>Schönberg and of the Frankfurt School, notably Adorno, without ever mentioning >>his sources. Had he given credit to Adorno and Schönberg, no one could have said >>anything about Mann's use or development of their theories. Does this apply to >>the discussion in this thread? Imagine that a programmer uses your code as the >>basis for his new program and introduces some modifications here and there, in >>evaluations functions, wherever. Then he gives you credit for the source and >>enters the new hybrid in a tournament for testing purposes. All programmers want >>to see how successful is their baby. Would this be allowed? If not, what are the >>limitations of freeware (free?) and what is the practical use of freeware if not >>"take it and develop it in any way you want" (free)? > > >I can't answer this. I can answer this. There is a difference between ideas and code. The code is copywrited in the US (and probably abroad due to international copywrite agreement laws). The ideas are not. Robert is making the ideas available via the code. He is not making the code available for re-use without his express permission. He has allowed people to run their own modified versions of his code on ICC and fics, however, I am positive that not every person doing this has not gotten his permission in advance. > All I can say is that I hate to see a big advantage like >the parallel search in crafty used against amateur programs every time they turn >around. Developing that search was non-trivial as anyone that has tried to do >so has found. It is easy to assume that because I wrote it and had it running >in under 3 months, it must be easy. It wasn't. It was easier for me, because I >had done it before in Cray Blitz and in other parallel things I have done. > >That's what started the entire discussion when the Dutch tournament started. IE >if "bionic impakt" had started with a normal crafty, and modified the >eval/search, I wouldn't have paid much attention. But regardless of how much of >that they modified, they took a _very_ complex piece of code unchanged (the SMP >search) which gave them a very significant performance advantage over the rest >of the programs. _that_ is unfortunate. Because they got a 1.7X speedup on >two processors after expending _zero_ effort to do so. What would _you_ do to >make a program 1.7X faster? That's what started the rash of email to me right >after the tournament started. I didn't sense as much concern about the chess >stuff in 'bionic' as I did the tremendous advantage a dual 500+ megahertz >machine gave them... > > > > >> >>I understand that all this thread started as a discussion about Bionic. I read >>that Hans gave you due credit. I am not questioning Bionic or Hans. I am only >>trying to understand what is "freeware" in general and as a learning/developing >>tool. >> >>Enrique > > >It isn't easy... it never was. But what 'generally' happens in a project like >this is that someone gets a copy, makes changes, finds that they work well, and >then sends them back to me... IE it is sort of a 'groupware' project just like >Linux has been for years. Folks don't go copy linux, make changes, change the >name and then say 'this is my system and it is better.' Excellent example! KarinsDad > _most_ of the people >that have done things to crafty send me the changes... that's where lots of the >ancillary stuff (ie the upcoming HTML output from annotate) comes from. That >was how it was planned from day 1...
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