Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 16:03:33 02/15/99
Hi Bob: After returning from my holydays I just come here and I see again the discussion about Crafty. The issue has returned in force, so it seems. Great that it is so because touches a foundamental issue. The proof of it is that any sparkle kindle the fire again. Let me add a little bit of charcoal to it saying that I see some confusions here. Confusions that are dangerous for you. But if they are MY confusions, then explain me them to me to learn a little more. Confusions are, I believe, the following ones: a) confusion between how good or desirable -or not- is to give something for nothing AND the use of it that some people with an ethic of a 2 dollar whore as Bob said, can do of it. b) confusion between the field of freeware, generosity in the giving and taking of ideas, etc, all that world that Bob see and recall with some nostalgy, and the world of sheer egotism, money, fame, commercial enterprises, etc. c) confusion about the status of this field: it is a science or a kind of it where, like any other, it need perpetual share of ideas to grow OR it is just a technical endeavour where the eseential point is personal reputation, money, etc, anything that can be got trogught better means. If this is a science, you, Bob, has done what is the very best thing to improve and push progress, no matter what, no matter cheaters, no matter abuse. A scientist is a public man. Is a man that makes publics his statements. No scientist just could do as fake scientist of cartoons inventing awful and secret things. That's has to do with power, not with science. And chess programming has an advantage over other fields: you can go beyond just publishing general statements or formulas; you can show the real thing in detail. That's what you have done and I think you did well, even if you maybe is now thinking differently. What you did is good and desirable even if some people made bad use of it. The full field of sciences is prone to that mischance. Of course this is ALSO a commercial endeavour and then a problem arise. A kind of ambiguity if you want, that permeates the entire field. As you gives, other guys try to take; as you thinks in science and progress, other people thinks in money, fame, rewards of any kind. And this is OK but surely creates some collisions. You gives and Ed -or any other commercial programmer- hides, of course. How should he do otherwise? You give and a couple of guys take the weaponry of Crafty and get a personal rewards. Sad, but that does not diminish the general benefit the field has got from your gift. In fact that's the way progress go on all around. Do you know an example in any art or technology where you are not going to meet the same kind of superpositions and conflicts? And even so the most selfish guys that takes just thinking for themselves play a part in the great Opus because, in a way or another, they put some improvement in what they steal or copy, they stimulate even more creativity precisely to surpass the followers and cheaters, etc, etc. Private and selfish apropiation of an idea is unfair and ugly, BUT is part of the process trought which private ideas becomes publics and so wheels of the collective machinery towards progress. Had you kept secret your source code, these guys of Bionic were not capable of doing Bionic, sure, BUT the entire field would be poorer, less advanced. Is that the great thing just to avoid a bad use of something? Bob, let me say you again that you did well, with generosity and a wide and deep vision. You are part of the history, past and present, of this field; that is not going to change no matter what. And so this is no the moment to going back. Sad would be that you, hearing so many advices about not to give nothing anymore, take the advice and becomes a lesser man that you was and you are. You are the scientist and although scientis are human and, as any other human being looks for personal rewards, they distinguish themselves because the reward they try to get is the respect and admiration of his colleagues and the laymen capable of at least understand a bit of what they have done; that you already have it. Let other people trying to get forgetable prices in forgetable torunaments. Let other guys trying to earn a living with the secrecy of his products. Let other people confunding you with any other kind of programmer, jealous of HIS ideas. But you, let you to be yourself. Fernando
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