Author: Uri Blass
Date: 03:06:27 02/16/05
Go up one level in this thread
On February 16, 2005 at 01:39:47, Mridul Muralidharan wrote: >On February 15, 2005 at 21:08:08, Andrew Wagner wrote: > >>On February 15, 2005 at 18:38:43, John Merlino wrote: >> >>>I'm not trying to start a brutally long thread here, but I'm just curious about >>>how people feel about a particularly touchy subject -- clones. What, in your >>>mind, would lead you to the conclusion that an engine is a clone? >>> >>>Let's forget trying to find ways to PROVE that a clone is a clone; I'm just >>>trying to define one. For the sake of argument, assume that the author of this >>>engine in question tells you exactly what he did and did not do, and you must >>>decide whether to call it a clone or not. >>> >>>Here are some hypothetical questions to start the debate: >>> >>>If the author took Crafty and completely rewrote the evaluation code and nothing >>>else, would it be a clone? >>> >>>How about if the author rewrote the evaluation code and search algorithm only, >>>but left the hashing code, et. al.? >>> >>>How about if the author rewrote everything EXCEPT for the evaluation? >>> >>>How about if the author rewrote everything EXCEPT for Crafty's evaluation of >>>passed pawns? >>> >>>I think you can see where I'm driving. >> >>[snip] >> >>To add a completely useless illustration, this reminds me of an age-old riddle. >>A bald man is someone who has no hair. What about the person with one hair? >>Well, ok, for all intents and purposes, he's bald too. What about the guy with >>two hairs? You gotta admit, we would consider him bald, too. And you can keep >>going on like this. Where's the line? >> >>As was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, you can't "steal" a line like 'int >>i;'. That's just standard coding practice. But I think if there's some concept >>that an engine uses uniquely, that you use without giving credit, that's a >>violation of the GNU licensing agreement. I don't know that you can call the >>whole engine a clone, but that part of it is certainly inappropriate. > >Good point - and I like the analogy :) >In computer chess especially , there are hardly any "secrets" - yes there are >tuning params , variations of move ordering , pruning , etc - but all techniques >are "known" (well , commercials might have something "interesting" ;) ) Your assumption is wrong. amateurs also may have secrets. The fact that they are weaker does not mean that they do not use productive ideas that are not known because a program may be weaker because of other reasons like not tuning params. Uri
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