Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 12:14:32 02/17/99
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On February 17, 1999 at 14:50:13, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >On February 16, 1999 at 19:36:13, Fernando Villegas wrote: > >>Maybe Bionic or Voyager have 99% of components from Crafty, but if the behaviour >>is not like Crafty, then is not Crafty. A chess program is for playing chess and >>so matters of style and strenght are the important ones, no how was done, how >>many new or olds pieces has, etc. > >One of the arguments being used in support of these clones is that they don't >play like the original. It's easy to make a program not play like the original. > You simply tweak the piece-square tables, mess with the king-safety, mess with >the pawn structure eval, and make a few other changes as appropriate. You could >do this in a few hours. > Yes, but to tweak just to get something different and to tweak to get something better are truly different things. I think that we must be careful with the usage of words. "Tweaking" sounds like "tampering" if my english is not so bad. Like "messing around". But then I could say that each new technical approach that does not begins from zero is a kind of twaking of the old one and no matter the degree, what matter is the result. It is not, then, just "simple tweak" this or that. Forcing the words you could say that Einstein just "tweaked" Newton physics. As you know newtonian world vision is not rejected, but "subsumed" as Hegel would say inside Einstein relativistic vision. >This does not make a new program. This effort does not make the tweaker a >coequal partner in the development process. Why not? If I tweak, say, 99% of Ferret source, would not be a new program? Better or not, but new. You say " it is MY source", but then if we go to examine in detail your source code I am sure somebody could say that in a degree is some kind of "tweaking" of another more simple program. Every idea or technique is a tweaking of another one, beginning from the elementals ideas in a continued chain of links. The only one that invented from zero was that gentleman that said "Fiat Lux" >I find it abhorent that some people don't have a problem with these people being >considered as somehow superior to Bob because whoever contends that the tweaked >thing can beat the untweaked version. I too have problems with that people that considered superior themselves, but I do not know and surely you neither does if they -Bionic people- feel or felt superior to nobody. You are supposing sentiments, attitudes. My arguments has never been confined to defend nobody. I have no interest in personal matters in this special case. If you put all that away, things are simpler. Yes, bob can be disturbed, this or that guy can be abusive, etc, etc: the core of my argument is that in this case as in many other what makes the differece is the behaviour, not the machinery behind it neither how easy or difficult was to do it. Maybe you hace another idea of it, but dont blame me for "not having" problems with certain people. > >>Besides, Is not the way science and technology grows? First trains wagons seemed >>conventional horses pulled wagons. Same shape, etc. Relativity cannot be >>understood without Nweton phisics, Einstein made his job on the ground of >>previous jobs. I don not imagine Nweton saying "Hey, you have stolen 98% of my >>ideas, you thief...!" Or just 23% if you want. In other words, this is a >>collective endeavour even if individual wheels into it feel it is not so and try >>to get all the credit or using general knowledege just for themselves without >>interest in share his own ideas, but then even so they will be used by someone >>else. Nobody can hide nothing for ever and be taken away the general trend of >>huma thinking and movement. Julio Verne kind of scientific monsters are not >>posible. You can delay, nothing else. Bob chose the contrary, to push, and that >>is his great achievement. > >Crafty is not an idea, Crafty is something tangible, it is a product of >engineering as well as research, it is covered by a license, which is backed up >by law, and hopefully by public opinion. Anything is tangible and an idea at the same time. And this specially tangible idea called Crafty has been given for free to people to tweak it as they want. The mistake is not about the idea that some people take it and do it what precisely Bob wanted the do, but some abusive interpretation of that license. We are confounding both things too much times, I believe. > >Bob has the right to put whatever restrictions he wants on the resale or >redistribution of Crafty. Of course. If he wants to tell people they can call it "Drafty" >and resell it, that is his right. If he wants to tell people they can modify it >and redistribute the binary while keeping the source secret from everyone >including Bob, that's his right. Of course > >This is all purely up to Bob, and everyone else has to respect this because in >theory we live in a civilized world where you can't just club someone and take >what you want from them regardless of their wishes. > I respect inmensely Bob. Do you think I do not? >It does not seem that Bob has allowed people to do either of these things, and >his legal rights should be respected by everyone. > >Assuming that people conform to the license that Bob has associated with Crafty, >there are other problems. If someone gets Crafty, modifies it so that it is >"better", and makes the source available, as required by the Crafty license, in >such a way that satisfies Bob, I don't think that they have the *right* to enter >a sanctioned tournament as sole author of the new creation. In this I agree with you without nuances. Truly yours Fernando I think that Bob >will always be a co-author, and he should have authority to say that yes, he'd >like a specific entry to compete in a specific tournament, or no, he wouldn't. >And since these tournaments have rules about individual authors entering more >than once, he shouldn't be able to give approval to more than one of these >Crafty-derived entries, including his own. > >bruce
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