Rule #2 and its use during history

[Chris Whittington]

Your "poll" was not scientific. It asked simple question and makes a bad assumption that the responders answered the questions accurately and completely. And the question were so vague as to make meaningful comparison impossible. How about following the methods the ICGA panel used to examine programs, then reporting that?

hehehe!!

we took the first part of the data results per program direct from the Watkins document COMPEVAL. The range of possible eval features was also taken from COMPEVAL. COMPEVAL data itself points to a particular and specific popularity and usage spread. The programmers polled confirmed the popularity and usage spread as being widely in usage. Each programmer was checked off by Ed and myself as making sense (ie were we correct to rely on the input and did only experienced programmers respond as we asked). Only one programmer appeared to have entered data which indicated that he was either amateurish and/or had not read and understood the Watkins COMPEVAL features, this particular programmer decided he wanted to test for the usefulness of doing a king attack val but was apparently uninterested in doing the king attack eval whatever the result. This also confirms my view that certain people who should have known better had not actually read and understood the icga documents. Not mentioning any names of course

[hyatt]

Your "poll" was not scientific. It asked simple question and makes a bad assumption that the responders answered the questions accurately and completely. And the question were so vague as to make meaningful comparison impossible. How about following the methods the ICGA panel used to examine programs, then reporting that?

hehehe!!

we took the first part of the data results per program direct from the Watkins document COMPEVAL. The range of possible eval features was also taken from COMPEVAL. COMPEVAL data itself points to a particular and specific popularity and usage spread. The programmers polled confirmed the popularity and usage spread as being widely in usage. Each programmer was checked off by Ed and myself as making sense (ie were we correct to rely on the input and did only experienced programmers respond as we asked). Only one programmer appeared to have entered data which indicated that he was either amateurish and/or had not read and understood the Watkins COMPEVAL features, this particular programmer decided he wanted to test for the usefulness of doing a king attack val but was apparently uninterested in doing the king attack eval whatever the result. This also confirms my view that certain people who should have known better had not actually read and understood the icga documents. Not mentioning any names of course

However, the "presence" of a particular eval idea (backward pawn, passed pawn, outpost knight, and such) says NOTHING about how it was implemented. Everybody does "square of the king". Everybody doesn't do it the same way, however. Unless you compare Fruit and Rybka, term by term, where there is far more similarity in the implementation details than between any two other programs...

That's the point here. You would LIKE it to be about "both do backward pawns, backward pawns is an idea, you can't claim anything just because they use the same chess idea." Unfortunately for your case, the ICGA did not make any claims about "copied ideas". That's not what rule 2 is about. It is about the implementation details, as the evidence shows... Nothing to do with ideas and abstract concepts...

[hyatt]

I think Chrilly's comments mimic the ICGA "feeling". See, for example, Toga/Fruit or cluster-toga. Borrowing source code, with attribution, and making sure that the original authors(s) agree so that they do not also enter the same event, has been acceptable for years. One notable exception was Gunda/Crafty where we both entered, and we both finished near the top. It was allowed as a way of appeasing the sponsor university. They had asked my permission to enter a modified Crafty. I agreed. They failed to enter. I then chose to do so after GM Roman Dzhindi suggested an operator and provided the computer we used. And then the sponsor decided to enter and the ICGA was left with a fiasco and they chose to allow both. It hasn't happened since and the application process was refined to make sure that we were not going to see multiple copies of any program again...

I would see absolutely nothing wrong with Vas stating "this is a fruit derivative, I have Fabien's permission, and am applying to play in the event." That would be perfectly acceptable... But having Fruit and Rybka, or Fruit and Toga, or any other "cousins" playing is not what any of us really want to see...

[Rebel]

The ICGA has not banned programmers from using other people's evaluations. But they need to be informed of it and receive the original author's approval. Look at GridChess in this tournament: http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=173 It used part of Toga, Fruit and Crafty, but with permission and acknowledgement on the entry form. I advise anyone entering future ICGA tournaments just to come clean. Admit on the entry form what you used and have the TD (and whoever he/she assign to help) investigate if this is proper.

On submission details (part-1)

For those who paid attention, this is from “Rybka 1.0 Beta readme.rtf”, the origins of Rybka 1.0

Special Thanks

I hesitate to include this section because I know I'll forget people who have been helpful in this project, but (with advance apologies to the omitted) here goes:

Robert Hyatt - For Crafty. There is nothing like an open source program for passing knowledge to the next generation.

Fabien Letouzey - For Fruit, which shattered a number of computer chess myths, demonstrated several interesting ideas, and made even the densest of us aware of fail-low pruning.

Tord Romstad - For making Fabien aware of fail-low pruning , and more seriously for sharing in every way possible his considerable knowledge.

Eugene Nalimov - For his cryptic but somehow fully functional endgame tablebase access code.

Uri Blass, Gerd Isenberg, Dieter Burssner, Vincent Diepeveen, Raschid Chan, Anthony Cozzie, Mridul M* , Thomas Gaksch, Peter Berger, Sandro Necchi, Ed Shroeder, Amir Ban, Christophe Theron and every one else, past and present, on the computer chess club: For sharing their computer chess knowledge despite the fact that in principle computer chess is a competitive field.

Heinz van Kempen, Guenther Simon, Olivier Deville, Sergio Martinez, Claude Dubois: for testing early versions of Rybka despite countless bugs and annoying problems.

Alex Dumov, Gabriel Luca: for helping a Windows newbie get up to around half-speed without excessive derision (or at least open derision )

and Iweta: for being great! and a pretty good Rybka tester and web master to boot

Happy testing, and best chess regards,

Vasik Rajlich

Budapest Hungary

December 4, 2005

Why is (was) this not good enough ?

Because it does not say "I copied large pieces of code from others, modified them when necessary, and have included those in my current code.

Assumptions make bad proof.

It implies that he just studied what others had done, then wrote his own code to do that. That is NOT what happened...

It **IS** what happened. There is more than enough evidence in the meantime to support that. You only need to put off your VIG glasses, empty your mind, start from scratch and you will start to see. Hard, I know from experience.

[Rebel]

The ICGA has not banned programmers from using other people's evaluations. But they need to be informed of it and receive the original author's approval. Look at GridChess in this tournament: http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=173 It used part of Toga, Fruit and Crafty, but with permission and acknowledgement on the entry form. I advise anyone entering future ICGA tournaments just to come clean. Admit on the entry form what you used and have the TD (and whoever he/she assign to help) investigate if this is proper.

On submission details (part-2)

Case Bruce Moreland and Ferret

Ferret is derived from GNU Chess 3.0 protected under GPL. Never mentioned on the submission details, see:

http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/program.php?id=35

Yet Bruce has 3 world-titles.

Rightfully earned but that's not the issue here, the ICGA inconsistency is.

Shall we drop the submission details issue ?

No. Shall we drop the continued dishonesty? I've explained this previously... Bruce did EXACTLY what I had intended to allow with Crafty. He started with GNUchess. He COMPLETELY rewrote each part. Starting with a new approach to move generation, which was significantly faster than gnu, and with that success, he rewrote the rest of the code as well. He sent a copy to me years ago, to see if I thought it was original. I looked at it and gnuchess side-by-side and they looked nothing alike. So why do you keep bringing this up, over and over, as intentional misinformation and a red herring? One can start from A, and by the time they get to B, nothing is left. There is nothing to claim on the entry form in such a case, as there is no copied code remaining. He could have legally gone commercial, which he almost did at one point, and not violated the GPL because no GPL code remained. Now is that clear enough that you can stop bringing up this false argument, over and over?

It's not a false argument, Bruce started from an existing source code taking the whole of GNU chess as a base. Vas did not even do that (!!).

I have no problem with Ferret, like Rybka Ferret is way too original to be a derivative.

The issue here is ICGA consistency. And what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

[Rebel]

Mark, I will answer in parts to keep the various issues well-arranged.

Ed,

It is interesting what you write below. You toss in a lot of straw men and not very useful stuff (which I will point out below). But you also admit some things. Lets go back to what the panel was formed to do. It was tasked with finding out if Vasik Rajlich violate the rules for the ICGA Tournaments it participated in. The panel’s work revealed a violation of Rule 2, which require Vasik to state on an entry form if his program was a derivative of any other program(s). When presented with the results of the investigate, the ICGA Board agreed. Only the ICGA Board can change their decision, so you need to appeal to them. Posting stuff here will not do that, so you continuing to bring up the same arguments again and again is not productive.

I once did that [ http://www.top-5000.nl/david.htm ] and concluded the ICGA Board does not have the needed skills and/or time to judge this complicated case. Look at the answers from David to my questions. When things become technical he gives evading answers and finally turns to the Secretariat (you and Bob) for answers. So I don't see how this could be fruitful.

[Rebel]

"fancy word games"? I really hate this kind of rhetoric. I was quite clear. Yes Vasik copied Fruit.

Finally we are talking! Thank you for saying it.

Ah, but you left out the rest of what I said. Selective quoting leads to deception, so please try in the future to quote in context. You need to quote enough for people to understand what was meant and not an edited version.

Simple question: is rule #2 about copying the work of others + changes or not ?

[Rebel]

1. In 2003 Vasik gets interested in computer chess, he later makes arrogant statements like "I will be the number one" and "I started chess programming to become a commercial".

2. He reads everything what's available and makes notes. I can only offer some screen shots of a 10Mb documentation file he mailed me around November 2011, I am bound to confidentiality and there is Rybka 2 and 3 stuff also in it.

http://www.top-5000.nl/notes.gif
http://www.top-5000.nl/notes2.jpg
http://www.top-5000.nl/notes3.jpg

Title of documents means almost nothing. It does not in any way rule out the theft of Fruit.

But its contents do. And you are not even interested ??

[Rebel]

4d. It's likely to assume Vasik modelled Rybka's EVAL to Fruit's. There are signs for that, there is also enough signs of the contrary. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Ah, then you admit Vasik “modeled” the Rybka eval on Fruit. We call that making a derivative, and you proved our point!

You would wish

Modeling

Step-1 : study a source code (voluntarily put on the Internet by a programmer) (Crafty, Fruit, Glaurung, Stockfish) to learn how to write a good EVAL and do it right from the start.

Step-2 : create an EVAL based on what you have learned using your own creative energy and your unique views how to code it, what to keep, what to add, what to throw away and how to weight the evaluation values for each (sub) function.

So what's the damage by the ICGA verdict?

Don't do the above, you are called a cloner.

The ICGA has robbed the new generation of chess programmers of their freedom how to study, how to code and we have arrived at a situation the ICGA has hijacked open sources (Crafty, Fruit, Glaurung, Stockfish) and baptized them as a model forbidden to follow.

Now you would have a valid point if you can proof Vas copied Fruit, but you can't. I (and others) can produce a long list of arguments in favor of an original work without copying.

These are the days of a new generation of genius programmers, not me, nor Bob, nor you, nor Chris, nor SMK, nor Uniacke, nor Morsch. They are gone in the sense they can't compete on the highest level any longer. The new generation of programmers, Fabien, Vasik, Anthony, the Stockfish guys, Richard Vida. They built (or have build) on the work of the previous generation as listed above and they learn 10 times faster as we did due to the Internet, the open sources, the fora, email, chatting. As such incredible fast progress is made above your and my imagination.

Is Fabien himself not one of the best examples of that? Coming out of nothing with Fruit 1.0 (March 2004) and 16 months later topping the rating lists with Fruit 2.1 ??

So Vas' 600 elo jump in 1.5 years does not surprise me at all. Not any longer I must say. And by his dominance the 5 years after adding 400 elo on his own without input of anyone he certainly demonstrated his unique capacities. If you can go from 2700 to 3100 in 2 years then you have proven that going from 2100 to 2700 in 1.5 years is not impossible, actually quite likely.

What the old guard of ICGA programmers missed is that the times have changed and they did not notice, that there is a new generation of chess programmers that (unlike us) grew up with Internet and make incredible fast progress due to the Internet and the explosion of knowledge available. I want the ICGA to recognize the times they are living and not become an obstacle to progress as it is now. Search for new ways to ensure fair competition, they are available, follow the CSVN example of last weekend. Don is dedicated to improve his similarity tool. This == IS == the future.

[Rebel]

Last one Mark

We have not examined your programs, but based on your wonderful documentation online. you included a huge mix of sophisticated and original ideas. We did not see that in the Rybka EXEs we examined. Looking over your documentation, it looks like your program would probably be judged not a derivative. You did not take almost the whole evaluation from any single program. You added many things to the state of the art. I would expect if we did an evaluation of Rebel. etc we would find it to be very unique. But until that is done, I cannot say for certainly.

Let's reverse the case. Someone reads the page, takes the Rebel data structure and (say) 80% of the EVAL ideas. In his own code. Is the result a derivative according to rule #2 ??