Programmers Open Letter to ICGA on Rybka/Fruit

[UncombedCoconut]

I have been censored on this thread for using the word pathetic against someone and now you would like to censor my use of colors on MY POSTINGS?!!! Honestly, the person who did that has really serious problems and I am telling you, you should be ashamed of yourself to say the least!

I would like to thank the hero who did this. Can phpBB also apply filters like "make entire post lower-case if /[A-Z ]{12}/" and "apply s/[?!]+/./g if /[?!]{4}/"?

To M.I.G.: The mod is actually doing you a favor. If you use emphasis judiciously and stay mostly on-topic, people are more likely to listen to you.

[orgfert]

I have been censored on this thread for using the word pathetic against someone and now you would like to censor my use of colors on MY POSTINGS?!!! Honestly, the person who did that has really serious problems and I am telling you, you should be ashamed of yourself to say the least!

I would like to thank the hero who did this. Can phpBB also apply filters like "make entire post lower-case if /[A-Z ]{12}/" and "apply s/[?!]+/./g if /[?!]{4}/"?

To M.I.G.: The mod is actually doing you a favor. If you use emphasis judiciously and stay mostly on-topic, people are more likely to listen to you.

He might be more interesting if he liked reasoning in dialog instead of preaching hellfire with a megaphone.

[MichaelIsGreat]

To Hyatt,


Hyatt, I assume that you are another zealot member of the useless ICGA?!! LOL

Hyatt, YOU ASK ME TO SHUT UP? I AM TELLING "YOU" TO SHUT UP YOURSELF AND TO GET LOST TOO. Who on earth do you think you are? AN INCARNATION OF GOD ONLY BECAUSE YOU WORK IN COMPUTING?

I know very well who you are, Hyatt, but does it justify telling me to shut up, arrogant and pathetic Hyatt only because I have different points of view than yours and only because I refuse to accept the shameful campaign to defame Rybka's programmer Vasik Rajlich?!!!

By the way, do YOU know what you are talking about, Hyatt, the programmer? Have you read the source code of Rybka's chess engine programs? The answer is NO!! What do you have to say about the points that I made in my previous post where the colors were censored?!! Silence is so convenient!!

For quite a few of you, Hyatt especially, you are just a bunch of arrogant people who are only good at throwing false and highly defamatory accusations against Rybka's programmer Vasik Rajlich when you have not even read the source code of Rybka's chess engine programs!! Shame on you!!


Regards to All (except to those who dare asking me to shut up. You already know that I will NOT shut up!)
MichaelIsGreat

[Sean Evans]

Hello to All,


David Levy, the main person behind the ICGA, has started a blind, completely illegitimate, and totally unfair defamatory attack against chess programmers with his recent attacks on chess engine programs that would supposedly be clones for a few of them. And why all this fuss? Only for a few very interested people to illegitimately gain access to the source code of the best chess engine programs and maybe steal their ideas in the process!

And what on earth has David Levy accomplished to advance further the state of the art of chess engine programs? Basically nearly nothing! Especially when compared to what the chess programmers like Vasik Rajlich, the programmer of Rybka, have done.
WE WOULD NEVER EVER HAVE BEEN AT THE HIGH LEVEL WHERE WE ARE TODAY IF CHESS PROGRAMMERS LIKE VASIK RAJLICH HAD NOT DECIDED TO IMPROVE DRAMATICALLY THE STATE OF THE ART IN CHESS ENGINE PROGRAMMING. NEVER! And yet, Vasik Rajlich should put up with ICGA's red tape bureaucrats whose only achievements has been to try to find faults at others when they repeatedly systematically refused to correct first ICGA's own many faults!


Instead of ICGA's new "witch hunt" of trying to find faults (where there are none! See my previous posts) among chess engine programmers who are honest enough to acknowledge their debts to open source chess engine programs --- these chess engine programmers who are the very people that allow the bogus, completely irrelevant ICGA "World Computer Chess Championships" to still be barely alive --- ICGA should start by seriously looking at itself and they should try to correct their own faults instead of accusing falsely others!! For instance, by assessing what is very wrong about the bogus and completely irrelevant ICGA "World Computer Chess Championships"!!!
I suppose it is easier to accuse others wrongly and falsely than to have the courage of correcting one's own mistakes and faults!!!

About your conspicuous silence about the following statement:
"WHEN SOMEONE GIVES THE SOURCE CODE OF HIS CHESS ENGINE PROGRAM, HE IS SURELY READY TO HAVE EVERY SINGLE LINE OF HIS SOURCE CODE USED IN OTHER CHESS ENGINE PROGRAMS. HE KNOWS THAT VERY WELL!!"
Consequently, a chess engine programmer could use the entire source code of a chess engine program whose source code is open source and has been made available online. And that would be perfectly fine for this chess engine programmer to do so!! Why? It is open source and free to use by anybody in their source code as soon as it has been made available online as an open source program!
MOREOVER, FOR YOUR INFORMATION, MANY PROGRAMS (AMONG THEM MANY COMMERCIAL PROGRAMS) USE BIG PARTS OF OPEN SOURCE CODE IN THEIR OWN PROGRAMS. NO ONE BOTHERS! BUT, IN THE CHESS ENGINE PROGRAMMING COMMUNITY THAT IS SO TINY, WE SHOULD BOTHER, ISN'T IT?!! And surely the blind and illogical people at ICGA could say, we surely should witch-hunt the most talented chess engine programmers as if they were so many to have reached the highest level, isn't it?!! Have I used the word pathetic in a previous post?!
These comments say it all about the current blind debate on clones among chess engine programs!! These comments should close the debate on clones once and for all!! END OF THE STORY I could say!!

Finally, I am perfectly happy to read other people's posts even when they disagree with me. However, is it really necessary to be dishonest at what you say when you disagree with me on what I have said? It would seem to be the case for a few sometimes! Moreover, what is the point of censoring someone's post by inventing false reasons to justify such censorship? Are you adults or blind children?!!
A few among you seem to have this problem of not being able to cope with other people's different points of view!! It is never too late to learn to accept others' different points of view!! I guess most of those posting live in a democratic society and therefore the Internet should certainly not be intolerant of other people's different points of view!


Regards to All
MichaelIsGreat

Any chance you might get a job, or go to school, or find a girl, or find a hobby, or something??? Your posts here are not adding anything of worth...

I second that, can we ban this idiot?!

Sean

[Harvey Williamson]

To Hyatt,


Hyatt, I assume that you are another zealot member of the useless ICGA?!! LOL

Hyatt, YOU ASK ME TO SHUT UP? I AM TELLING "YOU" TO SHUT UP YOURSELF AND TO GET LOST TOO. Who on earth do you think you are? AN INCARNATION OF GOD ONLY BECAUSE YOU WORK IN COMPUTING?

I know very well who you are, Hyatt, but does it justify telling me to shut up, arrogant and pathetic Hyatt only because I have different points of view than yours and only because I refuse to accept the shameful campaign to defame Rybka's programmer Vasik Rajlich?!!!

By the way, do YOU know what you are talking about, Hyatt, the programmer? Have you read the source code of Rybka's chess engine programs? The answer is NO!! What do you have to say about the points that I made in my previous post where the colors were censored?!! Silence is so convenient!!

For quite a few of you, Hyatt especially, you are just a bunch of arrogant people who are only good at throwing false and highly defamatory accusations against Rybka's programmer Vasik Rajlich when you have not even read the source code of Rybka's chess engine programs!! Shame on you!!


Regards to All (except to those who dare asking me to shut up. You already know that I will NOT shut up!)
MichaelIsGreat

[Jeremy Bernstein]

Can we please de-escalate? We're in the process of taking care of the situation. Please don't make it worse.

[kingliveson]

Possible outcomes:

1. IM Vasik Rajlich releases Rybka 1 & 2 source codes in compliance with the GPL, apologizes for his mis-conduct, and retains his world championship titles.

2. IM Vasik Rajlich refuses to cooperate with the investigation panel, loses world championship titles, and is barred from competing in future tournaments.

Note, Rybka 3 & 4 are not mentioned because there hasn't been anything suggesting they contain Fruit code.

[clumma]

There are many reasons for that, but it is important to realize that there is a world of difference between studying a program, finding a few tricks you can use, and implementing these techniques in your own program (which everybody agrees is OK) on the one hand, and using somebody else's complete program as the basis for your own work on the other hand. We're talking about the latter.

If there's a world of difference it should be easy to prove. But there isn't, and it won't be. That's why folks are down to counting the number of 'reputable programmers' who agree. Not a good situation and not a good policy.

]For the same reason that Mark Uniacke isn't guilty of software piracy when he sends me a free copy of Hiarcs: He's the copyright holder, and can do whatever he wants with his program.

Quite right, sorry. Since Fabien doesn't need any rights from the GPL to sell his program, he's not bound by it either. Still, I think my point stands: the fact that Fruit itself (along with Junior, etc) was so much weaker than Rybka sort of makes a letter signed by these authors about the source code 5 years later pretty stupid IMO.

Edit: Does anyone know the text of the ICGA rule in question? I can't find it on their site or in the open letter.

-Carl

[clumma]

Note, Rybka 3 & 4 are not mentioned because there hasn't been anything suggesting they contain Fruit code.

You must have missed:

"It is very likely that later Rybka versions have derived and benefited from Rybka 1.0 beta and hence in the circumstances our view is they should also be considered derivatives of Fruit 2.1 until proven otherwise."

-Carl

[kingliveson]

Note, Rybka 3 & 4 are not mentioned because there hasn't been anything suggesting they contain Fruit code.

You must have missed:

"It is very likely that later Rybka versions have derived and benefited from Rybka 1.0 beta and hence in the circumstances our view is they should also be considered derivatives of Fruit 2.1 until proven otherwise."

-Carl

That is I didn't mention Rybka 3 & 4 source code being released because there's no evidence to suggest Fruit traces. Especially in the case of version 4, prior to its release, the Rybka/Fruit debate was a hot topic -- so I doubt Vas would have been that negligent. Would it have mattered if version 4 was released under the name Bugka 1.0a ?! Just my opinion...