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Subject: Re: Crafty Modifications MUST be made available to Robert Hyatt

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 15:29:46 02/17/99

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On February 17, 1999 at 18:12:06, Jeremiah Penery wrote:

>On February 17, 1999 at 17:17:59, Dan Homan wrote:
>
>>On February 17, 1999 at 17:05:39, KarinsDad wrote:
>>
>>>All of these Crafty source discussions are interesting, however, they are moot.
>>>
>>>The copyright notice is quite clear; "any changes made to this program must also
>>>be made public in the spirit that the original source is distributed"
>>>
>>>*  All rights reserved.  No part of this program may be reproduced in any     *
>>>*  form or by any means, for any commercial (for profit/sale) reasons.  This  *
>>>*  program may be freely distributed, used, and modified, so long as such use *
>>>*  does not in any way result in the sale of all or any part of the source,   *
>>>*  the executables, or other distributed materials that are a part of this    *
>>>*  package.  any changes made to this program must also be made public in     *
>>>*  the spirit that the original source is distributed.                        *
>>>
>>>What this means, regardless of any spin put on it by others (including
>>>discussions on how mankind builds upon the knowledge of other, etc.), is that if
>>>you change the source code, you MUST make those change available to Robert.
>>>Bottom line. This does not mean that you have to send those changes to Robert,
>>>you just have to make those changes publicly available so that Robert can
>>>acquire them if he so wishes.
>>>
>>>If you modify the source code and do not do this, then you are in copyright
>>>violation. Not only are you doing something illegal, but you are also doing
>>>something immoral. Wrong is wrong, no matter what spin you put on it (this is my
>>>fundamentalist personality speaking Fernando).
>>>
>>>Let's take an example. Let's say that you have a special compiler which really
>>>works well with the Pentium II cpu. You decide to compile the source code with
>>>this compiler to see if Crafty runs faster compiled with it on your Pentium II
>>>system as opposed to being compiled with VC++. You find out that vcinline.h
>>>would execute faster if you made some assembly changes to it. You MUST make
>>>those assembly changes publicly available. It DOES NOT MATTER if you only run
>>>that version on your own personal Pentium II. If you change the source, you
>>>must make those changes available.
>>>
>>>If you do not want to abide by the copyright requirements, then you should not
>>>be modifying Crafty source code. It ISN'T yours to do with as you will. You did
>>>not spend thousands of hours creating it and improving upon it. You can read it
>>>to your hearts content. Using Crafty source to create your own program
>>>(including most of the Crafty clones which have not sent their changes to
>>>Robert) and not making the source available is illegal. It does not matter if
>>>you plan on eventually replacing 100% of the Crafty source with 100% of your own
>>>source or not. Once you make a change, you must make that change publicly
>>>available.
>>>
>>>KarinsDad :|
>>
>>I agree with you, but your post has raised an interesting question
>>in my mind....
>>
>>What triggers the requirement to make the changes publicly available?
>>If I download crafty, open main.c in an editor and type a few lines
>>of nonsense, do I have to make these changes available to the public?
>>If I don't, have I broken the law?
>>
>>This sounds like a silly example, and it is.  But what triggers the
>>requirement to make the change public?  For the GNU license, it is
>>any distribution of a modified program that requires you to make
>>the source code (and your changes) available to interested parties.
>>Is crafty the same in this regard?
>
>I would say that for the general case, any 'serious' changes to the source
>should be released, and any other changes should be made available on request.
>i.e. If I change a few evaluation parameters in Crafty [very easy to do], I
>would not be required to send these in to Bob. (I doubt he'd want to get a lot
>of 'I've made pawns worth 105 instead of 100, here's the new source' kind of
>stuff, anyway. :)

I think this should follow the "if you play, you gotta pay" model. You could
either post your changes to rgcc and/or here, or you could send an Email to
Robert, or you could post your changes onto a web page and post here and/or on
rgcc where your web page is located.

This does not mean that you have to send tons of source to Robert. A simple
message explaining basically what you did should be sufficient. If Robert wants
more, he could Email back. If he gets swamped with Email, he has the option of
minimizing that by changing the copyright, or making his opinion known in the
source and in these forums. I think the idea is to make all changes known and
let Robert and the general public be made aware. If the user gets to decide
which change is sufficient and which is not, then you open the whole can of
worms back up again.

Remember, a change could be something as simple as including a new line (or
deleting an old line) from an opening book. Is that more or less significant
than changing the eval parameter in the search engine? If you do not get to make
that call, then you will not make the wrong call.

KarinsDad :)

If someone asks me 'Can you give me the changes you've made
>to Crafty?', I would be obliged to give them.  However, if I completely rewrite
>the evaluation routine, that would be something which must be sent to Bob.
>
>Of course, this is only my interpretation of things...
>
>Jeremiah
>>
>>If so, is it ok to make whatever changes you like and keep them
>>private... so long as you do not distribute the modified program?
>>
>>Does anyone know the answer to this?
>>
>> - Dan



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