Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:50:07 08/24/05
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On August 24, 2005 at 12:49:55, Rolf Tueschen wrote: >Basic question: > >isn't it absurd that the commercial programs have the open sources for improving >but that they themselves dont give away new ideas? What indications do you have >that these secretive commercials have anything original at all and NOT only >clever applications of known ideas out of public sources? > >Or is it for you a convincing situation if a commercial wins repeatedly a >tournament? > >Could you add a few clarifying lines? Here's my thought. Over the past 35 years of my computer chess involvement, I have shared ideas with many computer chess enthusiasts... They have given me ideas, I have given them ideas. Etc. Every year at the ACM events, the participants use to sit around and discuss what was new for this year, knowing no one would try to implement something new in the middle of the event. And knowing that even if they did copy that idea for next year, we'd come up with something new anyway. So yes, a commercial programmer has likely looked at open-source programs. Most are honest enough and admit this freely. And yes, they take ideas that they haven't done. I can think of several "crafty" ideas that showed up in new commercial programs after the idea was released in Crafty's source. Outside passed pawns. Pawn Majorities. Etc. And yes, a commercial programmer is likely to come up with some unique ideas along the way, and if he doesn't reveal those, they become his "edge". Until they are eventually discovered either by hard work or serendipity, at which point the commercial programmer has to come up with new ideas or else resign himself to being no better than anyone else... It's been a 1-way street. And as I said many times over the past few years, if enough amateur authors get together to share ideas, before long the commercial programs will be no better than the best amateurs, and it won't be long after that until they are actually worse. We might be beginning to see this happen today. Of course, if you choose to not reveal ideas, it is your own personal choice. To the detriment of computer chess overall. For example, what 1980's programmer didn't read the Slate/Atkin chaper in Chess Skill and use that as a basic frame-work for a program? Or if they didn't, did they look at GnuChess? My only issue is that it seems somewhat amoral to take and not give back. "Giving back" does have its own set of issues. But this is the norm for all scientific developments. Otherwise only Intel could make ICs, only IBM would be making computers, There would be no Sony since they didn't develop the transistor, etc...
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