World's Best Chess Engine Outlawed and Disqualified

An anonymous reader writes "Rybka, the winner of the last four World Computer Chess Championships, has been found guilty by a panel of 34 chess engine programmers of plagiarizing two open-source chess engines: Crafty and Fruit. The governing body of the WCCC, the International Computer Games Association, is even demanding that Rybka's author — the international chess master and MIT graduate Vasik Rajlich — returns the trophies and prize money that he fraudulently won. Rybka will no longer be allowed to compete in the World Championships, and the ICGA is asking other tournaments around the world to do the same."

Comments

The obvious question

[elrous0]

If he was just ripping off two other engines, why did his win?

Sounds like he at least made improvements to them, and isn't that what open source is supposed to be all about? In fact, the article even acknowledges "ICGA isn’t even disqualifying Rybka because it copies Fruit — rather, it’s simply upset that Rajlich claims his engine is original, and refuses to give credit where it’s due." Okay, so maybe he should have given the other coders credit, but why should that disqualify him from winning? He still won. He didn't cheat. He didn't steal the code from the other engines (it was open source). His biggest offense is denying the other coders credit.

I think he should have to share the prize with the other coders (since they contributed code to the final product). But it still doesn't take away from the fact that his fork won. It doesn't justify taking away the win, as if he had cheated. His engine is still the best, open source code and all.

And, nothing against FOSS, but why on earth would you even release code designed for competition as open source, BTW? Aren't you essentially unzipping your fly and telling you competitors all your secrets? Couldn't releasing the source code wait until after the software was "retired" from competition?

Re:The obvious question

[h4rr4r]

Because he committed plagiarism, plain and simple.

Re:The obvious question

[Missing.Matter]

His biggest offense is denying the other coders credit.

Isn't that enough?

Re:The obvious question

[Un pobre guey]

He didn't steal the code from the other engines (it was open source).

If he refused to disclose that he used open source code then he most likely violated the terms of the open source license and therefore did indeed cheat. Open Source is not the same as Public Domain.

Re:The obvious question

[gman003]

Claiming your engine is original when it is not is not only unethical, but also a violation of the license. Even the BSD license forbids such things - you'll notice, somewhere buried deep inside, OS X will admit to using parts of FreeBSD.

Re:The obvious question

[gubers33]

Same reason Reggie Bush had to give back his Heisman and USC had to give back their National Championship Trophy... politics.

Re:The obvious question

[cultiv8]

Unfortunately, Rybka’s source code has never been available, so reverse engineering and straight-up move-evaluation comparison was used to analyze the originality of Rajlich’s chess engine.

I don't see how anyone can claim plagiarism if they haven't seen source code.

Re:The obvious question

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Nothing wrong with reusing other people's work with permission. But claiming that you made it (i.e. plagiarizing) isn't.

Also, Fruit 2.1 was released as GPL 2. Rybka is not, so it's a violation of copyright. And Crafty's license also doesn't permit the way Rybka used its source.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

If he violated the license terms of the software he used, he didn't have the rights to use the software he submitted for the compitition, therefore his entry was invalid.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Rybka is a commercial product, so if it's used open source stuff, it has violated the GPL.

Bad, bad, bad.

Re:The obvious question

[devnull17]

The same way that Google caught Bing ripping off search results a while ago: find some idiosyncratic behaviors (e.g. bugs) that serve no practical purpose and are highly unlikely to end up in two independent projects, and demonstrate the same weirdness in each.

Re:The obvious question

[Hatta]

Copyright and plaigarism are two different things. Even if you expand upon and improve other peoples ideas, it's plaigarism if you do not credit them.

Re:The obvious question

[ewanm89]

He didn't even do that, he combined two separate opensource engine making one better engine. As long as he follows the licence terms for the engines, there is nothing wrong with what was done. Now if the licence said there must be attribution then there is a problem.

Re:The obvious question

[Shikaku]

Google: Total assets $57.851 billion (2010)

Right.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly, especially by move comparison. If I and Kasparov make the same moves in the same situations, am I guilty of stealing his strategies? Besides, if the engine really is stolen from both, how can such a comparison be made without looking at its actual logic? Oh sometimes you use Kasparov's strategy and other times you use Carlson's... You must be stealing from both! Or maybe I have a new strategy that built on theirs.

Re:The obvious question

[KDR_11k]

Due to the whole derivative works clause that'd still be a matter of copyright as well.

Re:The obvious question

[JustinOpinion]

He didn't steal the code from the other engines (it was open source). His biggest offense is denying the other coders credit.

Well, it seems that Fruit is open-source in the sense that people can look at the codebase, but it is not FOSS. The license text (see, e.g. readme in this tarfile) says:

All right reserved. Fruit and PolyGlot may not be distributed as part of any software package, service or web site without prior written permission from the author.

Indeed it looks like a commerical product that you are meant to pay for. Rajlich's engine is closed-source and also commercial. He is not making his code available, so even if Fruit were, say, released under the GPL, he would be in violation of the license. But in fact Fruit is "all rights reserved" so if Rajlich took code from it then he is blatantly violating copyright, and thus breaking the law.

I would think that the competition has a blanket ethics rule that says that you cannot win by breaking the law. So Rajlich, if he did indeed appropriate code, doesn't deserve the wins. (Yes, he obviously did ~something~ to improve upon Fruit, but he still cheated.)

Re:The obvious question

[pz]

Going to the Rybka web site www.rybkachess.com there does not seem to be a way to download the source code, which would be required for releases under the GPL, assuming there is validity to the claim that he's copied other open source efforts.

Re:The obvious question

[wolrahnaes]

Many competitions have rules regarding dishonorable behavior. If he did use substantial amounts of open-source code without crediting the original authors as seems to be the case, that would be plainly dishonorable and thus grounds for disqualification.

As for the open source aspect, in this case a quick skim of the Fruity site seems to indicate (it's not very clearly worded) that it was initially open source during development and then went to a closed/commercial model after it had some wins under its belt. This makes sense to me if the developer started working on it as more of a personal challenge rather than for competition and then just ended up being good in competition.

On the point of telling your competitors your secrets, arguably Chrome and Firefox are competitors yet they're both fully open. If you're open source, your competitors may learn a trick or two from you but they might implement it in a completely different way. This may be better or worse. If they made different fundamental design decisions, they might not be able to make use of anything you did directly. If your main goal is to push the field forward and winning competitions is just a bonus, who cares if your competitors can see your code?

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Most open source licenses require that you give credit to the original authors. Failure to do so is no different that stealing proprietary code.

Re:The obvious question

[Moryath]

FTFA:

To come to this rather epic and libelous conclusion, the ICGA assembled a 34-person panel of programmers who have competed in past championships to analyze Rybka. Unfortunately, Rybka’s source code has never been available, so reverse engineering and straight-up move-evaluation comparison was used to analyze the originality of Rajlich’s chess engine. The panel unanimously agreed that newer versions of Rybka are based on Fruit — and worse, that the early beta versions were based on Crafty, another open-source chess engine.

So in other words:
- They empaneled as the "jury" a bunch of assholes who were predisposed to want Rajlich banned from competition (he kept beating them, four competitions in a row).
- They based their decision on "move evaluation", a decidedly touchy subject given that in any Chess situation, it should be theoretically possible to find an optimal move and the more optimal the engines, the more optimal moves they'll make.

So, people with a motive to try to force Rajlich into a no-win situation got a chance to... hey look, a no-win situation!

It’s a tricky situation, though: with Rybka now outlawed from the WCCC, and with the ICGA asking other tournaments to block its entry, the only real way Rajlich and the rest of the Rybka team can clear their names is to show their source code — a financially untenable move. In short, Rybka is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

ICGA fucked up royally. What they SHOULD have done is demanded a closed-doors, clean-room evaluation of the Rybka source code. Instead, they're playing the "burn him at the stake" card, banning him from ever competing again and demanding he "come clean" when for all they know, his source is original and just plays better chess than the other, also-highly-optimized (and likely to make the same "optimal moves" on basic chess theory for the most part) competitors.

Re:The obvious question

[Miseph]

At least one of the engines is GPL. Rybka is not. Ipso facto, there is copyright violation occurring.

Re:The obvious question

[grub]

They aren't buried that deep, even the manpages in OSX have BSDisms everywhere.

Re:The obvious question

[hattig]

Or he can get a lawyer and sue them for defamation and/or libel if what they are claiming isn't true. If it isn't, I am sure that he is already talking to a lawyer if there is no basis in the claim.

Re:The obvious question

[Dog-Cow]

If he doesn't distribute the binary, he needn't release the source.

Re:The obvious question

[nebulus4]

Fruit was a GPLed program until and including version 2.1. The investigation panel had compared Rybka 1.0 beta to Fruit 2.1, then they took a look at previous and later versions, including Rybka 2.3.2a to establish a pattern behavior. You can read all that has been done in the report: http://www.chessvibes.com/plaatjes/rybkaevidence/Rybka_Investigation_report.pdf

Re:The obvious question

[geekoid]

- They empaneled as the "jury" a bunch of assholes
Ad hom

who were predisposed to want Rajlich banned from competition (he kept beating them, four competitions in a row).
I know a lot of competitors and they don't want people who beat them banned.
Idle speculation and ad homs help nothing.

"except it's not a financially tenable move."

They could get a third party to analyze and compare.
And there are striking similarities in behavior.
Also, why are you overlooking the fact that they reverse engineered it and found similarities?

"and likely to make the same "optimal moves" on basic chess theory for the most part"
by your argument, opening moves in chess would have been the same for hundreds of years.

Re:The obvious question

[arth1]

Sounds like he at least made improvements to them, and isn't that what open source is supposed to be all about?

Having open source also helps.
This guy has closed the source and sells the compiled result.

Re:The obvious question

[mcmonkey]

Is it in the rules of these competitions that entries shall conform to the terms of software licenses?

If so, ban the cheater. (After establishing his code does in fact incorporate code from other sources and that he has violated the terms of the license on that code.)

If not, sounds like the situation Moryath described above. He was too good, so a few spoiled brats are taking their chess sets and going home.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Let's hope he has more money than the people accusing him. Justice goes to he with deeper pockets.

It's why innocent men often settle out of court.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if he was distributing it, and then only to the people that he distributed it to.

Re:The obvious question

[PopeRatzo]

If he refused to disclose that he used open source code then he most likely violated the terms of the open source license

So, is the International Computer Games Association an organization to promote OSS?

And is the World Computer Chess Championship about finding the most powerful chess computer or promoting open source software?

I'm not familiar with either organization, so I'm not sure. I don't understand what "cheating" means in this particular case. If it was found that Viswanathan Anand had learned the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defense (which he used to win the 2008 championship) from a magazine that he had copied illegally from a public library, would he be stripped of his title?

Do the rules of the computer chess federations require that all EULAs are observed and that all licenses are strictly followed? Can a title be pulled due to a patent dispute? What if the EULA on the operating system is not strictly obeyed?

"Cheating" is a very complicated concept when it comes to computer chess. I'm not sure if it can even apply, and I'm certainly not sure if a loser can claim that a winner cheated because he used his (obviously inferior) code.

The only fair way to do it, it seems to me, would be to require everyone to use open source, free code. Nothing proprietary allowed.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that Bing got those search results is because Google installed the Bing toolbar which tells you in the EULA that is does such things. The Google toolbar does the exact same thing. Funny that part gets left out during most retellings.

Re:The obvious question

[Altus]

Of course, this is based on the assumption that he actually used the source from Fruit, which is pretty hard to actually verify when his source code is not available.

Re:The obvious question

[Arlet]

Cheating, in this case, means violating the rules of the championship:

18th WORLD COMPUTER CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT RULES

2. Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams
whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all
other authors, or the source of such code, in the details of their submission form

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

And, nothing against FOSS, but why on earth would you even release code designed for competition as open source, BTW? Aren't you essentially unzipping your fly and telling you competitors all your secrets? Couldn't releasing the source code wait until after the software was "retired" from competition?

Maybe the software would come out stronger if it didn't need to rely on obscurity? The information security industry seem to more or less agree on this.

Re:The obvious question

[Riceballsan]

No they caught them by installing the bing toolbar, bing was obtaining the results by the rights the users signed away in the EULA. Users do not have the rights to sign away the results to googles search, the users queries are fair game, but the results google gives aren't. If I signed my rights away to Microsoft to allow someone to plant cameras and microphones in my house and use the results in advertising, and I listen to my Metallica CD, does that give Microsoft the rights to use Metallica songs in their next commercial?

Re:The obvious question

[elrous0]

come out stronger if it didn't need to rely on obscurity

Yeah, that's a great idea when applied to cryptography. Not so much when you're talking trade secrets.

Re:The obvious question

[toli]

Where's the license for Crafty? I checked the website and the source code, and i can't find the word "license" anywhere at all... It's still unethical to use someone else's code without giving them credit, but I am not sure if he has violated the license if the license itself cannot be found.

Re:The obvious question

[Vario]

On the Rybka website you can buy the current version of either Rybka 4 for 36 Euros or Deep Rypka 4 for 65 Euros.

If these downloads contain any of the stolen code in their binaries this definitely counts as distribution.

Re:The obvious question

[Registered Coward v2]

Is it in the rules of these competitions that entries shall conform to the terms of software licenses?

If so, ban the cheater. (After establishing his code does in fact incorporate code from other sources and that he has violated the terms of the license on that code.)

If not, sounds like the situation Moryath described above. He was too good, so a few spoiled brats are taking their chess sets and going home.

Except of course he could comply with the OS license (assuming it's GPL'd) without any acknowledgment as long as he doesn't distribute it.

So I agree with you, unless the rules stipulated 100% original code, what's the issue other than he was better at refining code than the others who had eh same code available?

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and there's the Apple site:

http://www.apple.com/opensource/

I'd argue that Debian and OpenBSD take a similar approach. The last thing we need is a return to the old BSD advertising clause. It's not like it's a secret - more that they're all doing what's required of them.

Re:The obvious question

[vlm]

The same way that Google caught Bing ripping off search results a while ago: find some idiosyncratic behaviors (e.g. bugs) that serve no practical purpose and are highly unlikely to end up in two independent projects, and demonstrate the same weirdness in each.

Some examples:
A game of 17 pawns vs a guy with two white bishops? A data set implying one square actually holds three pieces? Long rows of vertical pawns? One side somehow has not one, but two kings?

Re:The obvious question

[Lord Kano]

What if he had looked at the open source programs for inspiration, but didn't directly copy any of their code?

That could cause his program to behave similarly in a certain situation but not be the result of plagiarism.

I think they should come up with better proof before making such accusations. If the team is innocent, I hope they sue the hell out of these guys.

LK

Re:The obvious question

[postbigbang]

Similarities alone don't mean plaigarism. Logic can be gleaned from open source code, then applied to other code, perhaps engines. So long as copyright isn't violated, and licensing strictures aren't violated, reading someone's code, understanding the logic, then re-writing it is a hallowed action. For arguments supporting this, go to Groklaw, understand what BSD is (or read about the AT&T-Regents of UCB litigation), and so forth. Ask RMS.

Logic and code might or might not be two different things. He might be inviolation of copyright law and the strictures of the license of the two programs in question. And he might not. Until you know, you don't. If he rewrote the logic, then an apology is in order. If he stole the code (e.g. copyright or license abbrogation) then he's in trouble.

Re:The obvious question

[Arlet]

(and likely to make the same "optimal moves" on basic chess theory for the most part) competitors.

Of course, if you wanted to prove that two algorithms are identical, you would not compare the positions where the computers both made optimal moves.

Instead, you find positions where one program makes a weird mistake, and you compare the other program to see if it makes the same mistake.

Re:The obvious question

[canajin56]

Read the fucking report. An analysis of the binary code revealed 60% similarity. So about 60% of the binary was completely identical. Most of the evaluation functions which are unique to Fruit (AKA not done in other algorithms) were mostly identical, usually with only some constants changed. These are functions that not only are unique in their purpose to those in Fruit, but which have the exact same binary code, the same local variables, declared in the same order. That much duplication is absolutely beyond the pale. In earlier versions of Rybka, they found that obsolete functions from the Crafty codebase were in there. So, you are claiming that not only did he magically duplicate most of the functions, he even had the same useless functions just sitting there not being called. And the exact same unit tests for those unused functions. So, there is a long history of blatant copy and pasting, some of it even completely mindless (copying unused functions). Additionally, he was offered the chance to be on the panel and offer his own input without having to release his sourcecode. He refused to respond whatsoever in his own defense.

Re:The obvious question

[Moryath]

First off: would it kill you to learn some basic HTML? Hard to separate out your comments when you're too lame to even italicize.

I know a lot of competitors and they don't want people who beat them banned.
Idle speculation and ad homs help nothing.

Empanel the losers from the competition on a witch hunt against the winner. Sounds like a dick move to me. Definitely doesn't pass the smell test.

They could get a third party to analyze and compare.

Why, precisely, should the Rybka team have to pay for that? It's the ICGA that should have been the ones doing this. FIRST.

And there are striking similarities in behavior.

You can walk into any chess tournament and see "striking similarities in behavior" between members of the same chess club/team, or between players of equal skill. Chess is a logical game, relying on logical formulations. Eventually, like Checkers and Othello were, it'll be solved. The closer the programs get to solving it, the more moves alike they'll make. "Similarities in behavior" of mathematical problem-solving prove nothing. If anything, the fact that his program beat - rather than drew to - the other programs ought to prove that he was NOT using their source code.

by your argument, opening moves in chess would have been the same for hundreds of years.

Funny you should mention that.
There are a grand total of 10 logical chess opening moves (8 pawns, 2 knights). Opening with knights has been derided as downright silly for centuries; the only "variation" there comes when it's immediately followed by a pawn push alongside, putting it back into "standard" opening land of a Kingside or Queenside gambit. Openings that begin with the A,H,B,G pawns are rightly derided as virtually useless. Even opening with the C and F pawns is viewed as akin to suicide, since it allows the opponent to open straight into the middle virtually uncontested.

Queen's Gambit openings, of various sorts, have dominated the arena since the early 1400's. The Italian opening was the favorite kingside method for over 300 years, until the Ruy Lopez opening passed it up in popularity. The entirety of "Black Openings" in modern chess for the past 500 years have been attempts to devise responses to these three methods of attack.

So now that I've given you a lesson, run back to your checkers board. The grownups are discussing things.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

ICGA fucked up royally. What they SHOULD have done is demanded a closed-doors, clean-room evaluation of the Rybka source code. Instead, they're playing the "burn him at the stake" card, banning him from ever competing again and demanding he "come clean" when for all they know, his source is original and just plays better chess than the other, also-highly-optimized (and likely to make the same "optimal moves" on basic chess theory for the most part) competitors.

I think we can charitably assume that the offer to confidentially investigate source code was offered and denied. Assembling a team of 34 people to determine an important fact by unnecessarily inconvenient means really doesn't sound like something anyone would prefer to do. Assuming these 34 people weren't morons, they looked at situations where the chess engines in question do something really stupid e.g. due to a bug, not situations where all the engines say the same move is best just because it really is. If the evidence was not compelling, you would not see 34 people come to a unanimous verdict no matter the slight incentive you point out. Not to mention that obviously no sports organization desires a situation where the long-winning player is found to be cheating!

Re:The obvious question

[Dishevel]

I would not want you to strain you brain but...
He is an asshole of the highest caliber.
Copying large parts of OS stuff is cool.
Making changes and improvements is good shit.
Lying to give yourself full fucking credit while screwing over those who did much of the work is a sign that
the person is completely self centered and full of himself.

Fuck him and all his shit.
What does is say when you can not even identify the truly tarded pieces of shit that walk around on a daily basis.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see that PageRank source code cocksmoker.

Re:The obvious question

[Dwedit]

You can always match disassemblies made from similar compilers, you know.

Re:The obvious question

[tazan]

Did you even read the results? I only read a couple of pages and I was convinced. Sure, you might have the same functions that do similar things, but having the same inputs in the same order?

Re:The obvious question

[shutdown -p now]

Users do not have the rights to sign away the results to googles search, the users queries are fair game, but the results google gives aren't.

Bing toolbar wasn't looking at the search results directly (i.e. not parsing the results page), it was looking at URLs being navigated to. I.e. user googles for "bitcoin sucks" - the toolbar records that - and then a few seconds later he navigates to http://slashdot.org/ (because it happened to be the #1 hit). The toolbar would link those two together and send that info.

And Google definitely doesn't own the URLs themselves. It might own the aggregation of URLs in response to a particular search query (and even then, it depends on jurisdiction - I don't think that would fly in US), but in the process described above, that is not captured.

Re:The obvious question

[LoveMuscle]

Not necessarily, most Open Source Software (OSS) licenses (eg. GPLv2, EPL, etc.) only kick in on redistribution since you need the license to not be in violation of someone's copyright. You can USE all the OSS you want without complying with the license if you don't redistribute it. On top of that some OSS Licenses don't require that you disclose that there is OSS in your redistributable nor do they require you to provide source. (eg. 3-clause BSD).

In this case however, he's clearly distributing the binaries. Fruit appears to be LGPLv2.1 and Crafty has some goofball custom pseudo-oss license that requires attribution. So if he did copy the code and redistribute he's not complying with the licenses and in violation of copyright law.

I don't find it all that unusual that 2 different good chess programs might make similar decisions, and they don't have the source to compare so unless someone is going to sue and do discovery the claim of plagiarism is (IMO) premature.

The courts exist to settle just these sorts of conflicts, and banning him on supposition is questionable.. IANAL....

Re:The obvious question

[Lunix Nutcase]

So AdSense and AdWords are open source? Their search engine is completely open source? Oh right, it's not and those are what make up well more than 90% of Google's revenue. But let's ignore all that and point out examples of things that Google has open sourced things that make up almost none of their yearly revenue and claim that that makes them an open source company!

Re:The obvious question

[sp332]

The GPL is a distribution license. There are no restrictions on the *use* of GPL software - it's not a EULA. So if the programmer isn't distributing his program to other people, the GPL has nothing say say about it.

Re:The obvious question

[KingMotley]

Cool, where can I download the source to google.com?

Re:The obvious question

[MysteriousPreacher]

It seems a bit confusing. Here's some text from an open letter they published:

"Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their submission details."

This appears to be asking for original work, yet it asks teams to list the authors of code that they've included or derived code from. How is it original work if they've included code from other sources? Also, if they do allow code from existing projects then does the team really have to list the author of every little change that had been made to that code?

They could really benefit from clarifying this.

Re:The obvious question

[cavreader]

Towing the open source party line makes it hard to develop anything new without your competitors taking advantage of it. If you do create something new and unique you have to stumble through a minefield when deciding on which type of license wiill keep the geeks happy and at the same time support a reasonable revenue stream to cover your R&D costs. Not a lot to worry about today because no one seems to be doing any original work anymore. Everyone's to busy arguing about minor browser updates and other related minutia like crappy phones apps.

Re:The obvious question

[stonecypher]

Sounds like he at least made improvements to them, and isn't that what open source is supposed to be all about?

Why is it so often difficult for source zealots ever cope with that what open source is about has nothing to do with cheating at a competition or following rules?

Sounds like he at least made improvements to them, and isn't that what open source is supposed to be all about?

Very few of those codebases were generated for the competition.

It makes me very uncomfortable that you're upvoted to +5, insightful for apologizing away that a guy made minor tweaks to other people's work, submitted it as his own to a competition which does not allow appropriation or collaboration, and are trying to make this an ethical issue about something that has nothing to do with the contest.

He cheated his balls off. Are you really such an OSS fetishist that you can't see that?

Re:The obvious question

[stonecypher]

I don't see how anyone can claim plagiarism if they haven't seen source code.

That should embarrass you, as the answer is in the quote you made of the other person speaking.

Re:The obvious question

[dwarfsoft]

In which case then he violated GPL the moment that the ICGA requested the code from him to verify their facts. By failing to comply with their request if there were GPL code involved he would have been forced to release that code to them. So, he is clearly in the wrong if he did indeed use GPLd code within his app without disclosing the source to the ICGA. Therefore by them finding similarities in the Binary he really is out of options for proving his innocence.

Re:The obvious question

[superwiz]

How's putting two things together plagiarism if it was never done before? The whole is bigger than the sum-total of the parts. And if anyone doubts that the whole is bigger than the sum-total of the parts, I welcome them to take any computer program composed of parts (lines of code) and to switch those parts around. If the resulting program doesn't change, they may have a point.

Re:The obvious question

[Skuto]

Did you read the original statement from the ICGA? The one including the analysis?

Oh right, this is /.

Nevermind.

Re:The obvious question

[tazan]

If he was just ripping off two other engines, why did his win?

Remember the netflix competetion? Every time they absorbed a competitor their score went up slightly. In the end it seemed like the winner was the one that could combine the most teams the fastest.

Re:The obvious question

[hypergreatthing]

So 40% unique isn't good enough?

Re:The obvious question

[Un pobre guey]

Google's vast infrastructure runs on GNU/Linux, and they sponsor the yearly Summer of Code that creates a lot of new FOSS code. They are an open source company, even if they keep their main revenue-producing technology closed.

Re:The obvious question

[gknoy]

I thought you merely had to provide the source, if asked for it? E.g., a separate download, a printed book with a printout, etc? I suppose it depends heavily on the terms of the partcular license.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't steal the code from the other engines (it was open source).

Using other's code without respecting their copyright license is against the law in most countries.

But more importantly in this case, the tournament rules for all ICGA tournaments state that:
"Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in the details of their submission form."

The tournaments are a competition among programmers. In order for the competition to be fair, they are supposed to write their own code, or at least get permission and give proper attribution (any code they didnt write themselves, they are supposed to explain on the submission form).

The Rybka team broke the rules. Rybka 1.0 Beta through Rybka 2.1 (and probably later) contained an "evaluation function" (a major component of a chess program, representing many months of hard work) that was derived directly from Fruit 2.1, one of the strongest open-source engines available at that time. Rajlich profited by illicit copying of the hard work of others. He entered Rybka in several world-championship tournaments, each time claiming it was entirely his own work. The ICGA has now concluded that it wasn't entirely his own work.

Re:The obvious question

[superwiz]

Not if the other engines are in public domain. You could argue that common knowledge does not have to be credited. When was the last time you acknowledged the writers of qsort? I am not making that argument, by the way. I don't know how well-known Fruit and Crafty are in the community. I am just saying that there is if they are understood to be the basic knowledge, then one could omit acknowledging them.

Re:The obvious question

[asdf7890]

Including the one who has just had his prizes taken back. I think I see how your logic is working...

Re:The obvious question

[zill]

Borrowing GP's analogy: the planted microphones don't have access to the Metallica CD. It merely records the ambient sinusoidal waves in the room. Surely Metallica doesn't own ambient sinusoidal waves?

Re:The obvious question

[kelemvor4]

He didn't steal the code from the other engines (it was open source). If he refused to disclose that he used open source code then he most likely violated the terms of the open source license and therefore did indeed cheat. Open Source is not the same as Public Domain.

I know it's really just semantics, but I would not call it cheating. I would call it stealing (at least in the context of software "ownership" as it exists today). If he didn't comply with all the terms of the open source license, then he wasn't licensed to use it.

Re:The obvious question

[gorzek]

Google would have to claim they hold some kind of copyright over the contents of the search results, which would definitely not fly in a US court. Search engine results are just arrangements of facts. Since the results contain no original work on Google's part, they can't copyright the results themselves. Same reason the phone book isn't copyrightable. Copyright covers expressions of ideas only, not facts or collections of facts. I think it would be quite a stretch for Google to claim the specific order of the results constitutes a creative work. At best, the code behind the search engine is copyrighted, the algorithms may be patented (or kept as trade secrets), but that's it.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

If you spell plagiarism correctly, is it considered copyright infringement of the dictionary?

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should read the ICGA's decision.

At the bottom of that page, you can also find the evidence that they used to reach that decision. To any programmer who can read a disassembly, its pretty clear that the eval in Rybka 1.0 Beta was derived from Fruit 2.1, and this situation persisted until some version later than Rybka 2.3.2a (probably around the time of Rybka 3 when the eval was rewritten).

Or you can talk out of your ass some more, that works too.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's open source. He CAN copy/paste, the source is not copy protected. Even if he copied the stuff he doesn't need. This what open source projects are for. If you expect people to respect your work because you made it, tough luck.

Re:The obvious question

[zill]

Did you even bother clicking the link? It says "Demo versions" and "Purchase Rybka" in pretty big letters.

He's actively distributing the binary, but refuse to provide the source to ICGA. Binary analysis shows 60% congruence to other GPL projects. This is a case of GPL violation, plain and simple.

Re:The obvious question

[shutdown -p now]

Let me extend the analogy a bit further (hey, it's always fun!). Suppose that the guy is listening to Metallica in headphones, and is tapping his foot with the rhythm. The microphone does not pick up any of the music, just taps. Does Metallica own said taps, and would it be copyright infringement to use them in advertising by owner of the microphone?

Re:The obvious question

[zill]

How can he win a chess competition without submitting anything?

Re:The obvious question

[JohnRoss1968]

Thank YOU!!!!!
After reading his post I was too stunned by the stupidity of his comments to respond.
BTW Mate Goes to you.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find odd is that they can specifically and accurately determine not one, but TWO separate programs that it took source code from. All without actually seeing ANY of the source code of the program.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

That was some bad PR for Google! Google tried poisoning BING by using it's user feedback system, which BING has!

Re:The obvious question

[GooberToo]

Open source does not mean free of copyright. Furthermore, many open source licenses depend on copyright enforcement. Furthermore, claiming someone else's create as your own is fraudulent at best.

Re:The obvious question

[aardwolf64]

Right click, View Source. :-P

Re:The obvious question

[ArsonSmith]

It's a custom license forbidding use in competition without prior consent and acknowledgement, including keeping the name of the original program to preserve it's history.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's open source. He CAN copy/paste, the source is not copy protected. Even if he copied the stuff he doesn't need. This what open source projects are for.

You fail academics. Plagiarism has nothing to do with copyright. If the software was from 1700 and in the public domain then it would still be plagiarism.

Plagiarism means using someone else's work and claiming it as your own. Copyright protects against copying and using someone else's work without their permission but is perfectly happy to allow that copying if you get permission. Plagiarism is still plagiarism even if you have permission.

Re:The obvious question

[Phleg]

Rybka is sold commercially. Seriously, have you perhaps considered briefly familiarizing yourself with the obvious facts surrounding an issue before mindlessly commenting on it?

Re:The obvious question

[alexo]

So 40% unique isn't good enough?

Not if you claim to be 100% unique.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a grand total of 10 logical chess opening moves (8 pawns, 2 knights). Opening with knights has been derided as downright silly for centuries;

So now that I've given you a lesson, run back to your checkers board. The grownups are discussing things.

Hilarious, you can't even count the moves!

Re:The obvious question

[zill]

The taps aren't part of the Metallica cd.

The URLs are a part of the google results. In fact, I can argue that this search query to URLs mapping make up half of the value of Google. If somehow I magically had such a mapping back in 1996, I would be running $40 billion company right now.

Re:The obvious question

[gman003]

There's a big difference between "not advertising it" and "blatantly lying about it".

Re:The obvious question

[icebraining]

With the GPL you at least have to include an offer to ship the source with the binary, the user can't be expected to guess.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL does not require that you make the source code downloadable, only that you make it available.
To check for GPL-compliance you would have to contact Vasik Rajlich and ask for the source code.
This would however be based on your assumption that Crafty and/or Fruit is realeased under GPL, both which are wrong.
Both Crafty and Fruit uses software licenses that require written permission from the respective authors for redistribution.

Re:The obvious question

[ArsonSmith]

Right in main.c

  Crafty, copyright 1996-2010 by Robert M. Hyatt, Ph.D., Associate Professor
  of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

  Crafty is a team project consisting of the following members. These are the people involved in the continuing development of this program, there are no particular members responsible for any specific aspect of Crafty.

  * Michael Byrne, Pen Argyle, PA.
  * Robert Hyatt, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  * Tracy Riegle, Hershey, PA.
  * Peter Skinner, Edmonton, AB Canada.
  * Ted Langreck

  All rights reserved. No part of this program may be reproduced in any form or by any means, for other than your personal use, without the express written permission of the authors. This program may not be used in whole, nor in part, to enter any computer chess competition without written permission from the authors. Such permission will include the requirement that the program be entered under the name "Crafty" so that the program's ancestry will be known.

  Copies of the source must contain the original copyright notice intact.

  Any changes made to this software must also be made public to comply with the original intent of this software distribution project. These restrictions apply whether the distribution is being done for free or as part or all of a commercial product. The authors retain sole ownership and copyright on this program except for 'personal use' explained below.

Personal use includes any use you make of the program yourself, either by playing games with it yourself, or allowing others to play it on your machine, and requires that if others use the program, it must be clearly identified as "Crafty" to anyone playing it (on a chess server as one example). Personal use does not allow anyone to enter this into a chess tournament where other program authors are invited to participate. IE you can do your own local tournament, with Crafty + other programs, since this is for your personal enjoyment. But you may not enter Crafty into an event where it will be in competition with other programs/programmers without permission as stated previously.

Re:The obvious question

[shutdown -p now]

Oh, I do not dispute that the mappings generated by Google are quite valuable, and someone else using them cashes in on that value. But they are not copyrightable or otherwise protected. The URL itself is "owned" (if this can be applied to the URL at all) by the site in question, and the search term is not owned by anyone. Mapping of search query to URL is a plain statement of fact, not a creative expression.

Now in some countries (not in US) collections of facts are still copyrightable under the "sweat of the brow" doctrine, but only as aggregates (e.g. phone books). Even then, I very much doubt that cherry-picking individual items, especially when it happens in an indirect way through an intermediary - as is the case with Bing toolbar - would produce a derived work; but, of course, I'm not a lawyer.

Re:The obvious question

[rtfa-troll]

Right, except if you RTFA and in particular the investigation report, that isn't what happened here. Please see the many other posts in this article. Large parts of his functions match byte for byte.

Re:The obvious question

[h4rr4r]

As someone who is no chess master but can count, you are wrong. Those horsies move in Ls and each one has two possible Ls he could move into . Plus the pawns can move one spot or two spots. So that is 8 more moves. Up to 20 already. There might be more, but I am too busy playing Go to count.

Re:The obvious question

[icebraining]

- Moe: Back when I was Gorgeous, everybody
              wanted a piece of me. But somehow, I just never made it to the
              big time.
Homer: Why not?
    Moe: 'Cause I got knocked out forty times in a row. That, plus
              politics. You know, it's all politics.
Homer: [glaring] Lousy democrats.

Re:The obvious question

[PopeRatzo]

That's my answer. Thanks. I didn't see that rule in the article.

Re:The obvious question

[PickyH3D]

Either that, or it's because he accepted money and other "lavish" gifts that collegiate athletes everywhere would want, but do not take because they follow the rules.

On one hand, I can understand the players' reasoning. The players' are the reason that these schools make tons of money off of their athletic programs, but, on the other hand, the rules are there for a reason. Either play by them, or do not play at all.

At the same time, I do not understand how someone can be told to pay back "gifts." I cannot really find anywhere that says he accepted more than just gifts (rather than outright cash). That sounds an awful lot like the non-PC named "Indian Giving" by the agent that should be banned from helping college athletes.

Re:The obvious question

[icebraining]

but I am not sure if he has violated the license if the license itself cannot be found.

Actually, that's not how it works. If you can't find a license, then you're subject to the default copyright terms which are much harsher than any OSS license (no touching the code at all). So if he claimed that, he would be in an even worse situation.

Re:The obvious question

[rtfa-troll]

If you had READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE PROPERLY you would know that he agreed to a bunch of rules which meant that a) his source had to be available and b) his code had to be original. The fact that the other engines are or aren't public domain is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.

Re:The obvious question

[toli]

gotcha. thanks. silly me to search for "license" and forget "copyright". while not a "typical OSS license", the copyright is clearly violated if Rybka is a derivative, since it's a commercial app and has been entered into competitions. thanks for pointing me to the copyright.

Re:The obvious question

[postbigbang]

Is this because the compiler does similar things to function calls? It's really NOT proof until you see the source. I can write a lot of code that compilers will optimize to the exact same bytecode. It's not really convincing without *source*.

Re:The obvious question

[rtfa-troll]

there is nothing wrong with what was done

Except, as you would know if you had just RTFA, he agreed not to plagiarize when entering the competition and there's pretty solid evidence he plagiarized, and he also agreed to deliver source code if needed, which he seems to be refusing to do. A completely separate issue from his licensing status.

Re:The obvious question

[scot4875]

Empanel the losers from the competition on a witch hunt against the winner. Sounds like a dick move to me. Definitely doesn't pass the smell test.

Projection. When you're a dick, you tend to think that everyone else is a dick, too.

--Jeremy

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

As a teacher, I will tell you this: If your answers are correct, it's hard for me to show that you were cheating.

However, if your answers are incorrect, but identical to someone else's, then that raises a flag with me, and I look further.

Sometimes an answer to the first part of a question will get used in later parts. If you make a mistake, but propagate the error, no problem. But if you don't propagate the error because you copied the later parts of the problem from someone else, that's a red flag.

They didn't accuse him of cheating because he was winning. They accused him of cheating because he was cheating.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you need to read the GPL and the ICGA rules for competition.

Re:The obvious question

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

You're completely wrong. The source is indeed copyrighted. Additional permission to copy is granted by the license, usually on the condition that attribution is preserved.

Re:The obvious question

[DraconicFae]

If he was just ripping off two other engines, why did his win?

Even if you use two pieces of identical software on identical hardware in a tournament, it's irrational to expect the results will be the same. The results will depend on who you face, what colour you have, and what opening the opponent selects, at the very least. Expecting exact parity means expecting exactly the same set of game circumstances, which never happens.

Re:The obvious question

[krazytekn0]

We need a tracking system which uses webcams to see if you 1. go to TFA page and 2. move your eyes systematically as if you're reading the entire article. Then posts by those people that pass the tracking should be automatically highlighted.

Re:The obvious question

[Rockoon]

These are functions that not only are unique in their purpose to those in Fruit, but which have the exact same binary code, the same local variables, declared in the same order.

You cannot determine what order local variables were declared in, from the binary, if optimizations were enabled.

The idea that this is evidence is proof that those accepting it as evidence have no business doing so.

That much duplication is ...

What duplication? I just discredited it as evidence. Anybody familiar with compiler optimizations would know this, and it looks like the people hanging this guy are conveniently ignorant.

Re:The obvious question

[eulernet]

If he was just ripping off two other engines, why did his win?

I have followed this story since the beginning, so I'll try to explain what happened.

Almost 2 years ago, a team of programmers released an open source chess engine, named Ippolit:
http://ippolit.wikispaces.com/home
This engine was stronger than Rybka 3 (100+ ELO difference).
Immediately, Rybka's author (Vas) claimed that it was a decompilation of Rybka, and succeeded in blacklisting this program from international competitions, without giving any proof !

A few months later, an unnamed chess expert disassembled Rybka 3 and compared it with Fruit.
The biggest change is that Vas used bitboards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitboard to improve the speed of Fruit.
The expert also detailed the small differences between Rybka and Fruit, his report was incredibly detailed and there was no doubt that Rybka 3 was a slightly improved version of Fruit (sorry, I don't remember where you can find his analysis).
At this moment, Vas claimed that his computer crashed, and he lost the source code of Rybka 3, so he started working on Rybka 4.

I remember that Fabien Letouzey (Fruit's author) was worried that opening his source code would lead to commercial abuse.

Vas has always been dishonest about Rybka, for example by claiming that other engines stole his code (and always pretending that it didn't copy Fruit), or by displaying the wrong depth search (yes, Rybka does a 19 ply search, and displays as a 13 ply search !).
Also, he used his results in the Chess Championship to make loads of money, which is quite irritating when you know the whole story, and this is why he deserves to be banned and cannot claim that Rybka is the World Chess Champion Program anymore.

What saddens me is not that Vas has been punished, but that all his team is punished:
http://www.rybkachess.com/index.php?auswahl=Rybka+team
since I'm pretty sure they did a tremendous work in good faith !

BTW, the ICGA members are well known and respected programmers, so please, show some respect !

Re:The obvious question

[HTH NE1]

Meanwhile, Rybka is counter-suing the ICGA boardmembers and all of its human opponents for plagiarizing their parents' DNA, copying half of both parents' nuclear DNA and completely copying their mothers' ribosomal DNA. Rybka is suing all opponents regardless of age, arguing that the statute of limitations does not apply as the plagiarism has been ongoing by the humans continuously making additional copies through methods called "mitosis" and "cytokinesis". The point of contention appears that the humans made no attempt to disclose to Rybka that they were not original works, did not satisfactorily disclose the authorship of their DNA, and that such fraud has been perpetuated for generations.

Re:The obvious question

[makomk]

You'll notice that Google didn't claim that what Bing was doing was illegal or a breach of copyright, just that it was ethically questionable and indicated Microsoft weren't comptetent enough to produce good search results without piggy-backing on someone else's effort.

Re:The obvious question

[garyebickford]

Indeed. I don't know if it's still true, but for many years MS Windows FTP client binaries included the original BSD attribution. :)

Re:The obvious question

[rtfa-troll]

It's true that there are many source variants that will come to the same binary. However there are also many many more variants which do not. That's why the reports have lots of detail about this. Think, for example, about a simple ordering choice, first move file A then rename file B or first rename file B then move file A. Even if, as you suggested, the code for the two acts becomes the same, there are now two different possible binaries. Add simply one more choice and your possible number of binaries rises quadratically. Add a few arbitrary constants to the mix and you very rapidly come to a situation where the chance of two identical programs recurring randomly even if the entire universe is used for storage, becomes effectively zero. For a very small program this choice is limited, but for something the size of a chess position evaluator there are so many possible choices that a strong similarity is already very strong evidence of copying.

Re:The obvious question

[epine]

Whether optimization burns all information concerning the order of local declarations really depends upon the compiler.

Generally, there's not a lot to be gained by scrambling the order of stack layout. Some short term variables might be moved into registers and have no stack allocation. So optimization deprives you of complete information. But the order of variables on the stack for the variables assigned to the stack could well remain fairly constant, even with optimizations enabled.

Compilers are a formal decision procedure. I wish my optimizer was so potent as to successfully hide this.

There's a recent TED talk where the speaker deduces the writing order of the Indus language by observing symbols crammed into the left margin a la the old joke:

Plan ahea
              d

Bon voyage on your mission to tear this guy a new one.

Re:The obvious question

[postbigbang]

I can write the same code set, alter it significantly, enough to easily pass the test of copyright, do a make, and have the results be identical in every possible way.

Approaching the logic of a chessboard layout, once having viewed open source code, I could rewrite it to yours, or anyone else's satisfaction. This is without reverse engineering the code, rather, following its logic and using a mime-- but satisfactory analog-- of what it does. Other concepts, like UI, may have protections, but I can alter these, too-- and a chessboard isn't copyrightable.

So they could be very close in logic. My chess opponents are very good, and I've been hammered playing chess. After a while, however, I can start to predict their moves, as they can predict mine. Such diminishing returns really proves nothing. I maintain you have to see the source, and have to know that the source license and copyrights haven't been abrogated.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on how it was used. If Fruit 2.1 is GPL 2 and you make a derivative work from it, you do not have to release the source. You only have to release the source when you distribute your derivative work to someone else.

I don't know how the tournaments work, but it's entirely possible that they are done in a way that wouldn't result in distribution. On the other hand, maybe not.

Re:The obvious question

[nebulus4]

First of all, the guy who wrote the article is just clueless. No offense to him, but he sounded as one who has clearly no competence to speak on the matter.

Secondly, the panel only made a recommendation. The ICGA board plus WCCC tournament director acted like the jury. They agreed with the recommendation.

Thirdly, Ken Thompson was one of the members of the panel and I quote investigation report:

Here are some opinions of panel members recorded on the investigation wiki pages:
Ken Thompson:
After reading all the evidence, voted that he was convinced by the case against Rybka.

If you are going to call him an asshole, I'm definitely going to call you an idiot.

ICGA didn't f*ck up.

Re:The obvious question

[rtfa-troll]

Is it in the rules of these competitions that entries shall conform to the terms of software licenses?

I don't know. Maybe we could Read The Finite Article to find out? Oh gosh it's in the middle of the page in italics. Too complex.,

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Imho, plagiarism is worse than violation of copyright.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

That's beside the point; he wasn't accused of copyright infringement, but of plagiarism.

The legal system may or may not care about plagiarism, but it's something a college or a prize committee is likely to take extremely seriously....

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, this is based on the assumption that he actually used the source from Fruit, which is pretty hard to actually verify when his source code is not available.

Hard but not impossible for the folks who like to get their hands dirty digging into binaries and reverse engineering things. Especially if they have access to the source code of the other programs he's alleged to have copied from.

Re:The obvious question

[fatphil]

This is specifically not being treated as a copyright issue.

Admittedly, all the groundwork has been done for it to be now turned into a copyright issue as well.

Re:The obvious question

[exomondo]

Google's vast infrastructure runs on GNU/Linux, and they sponsor the yearly Summer of Code that creates a lot of new FOSS code. They are an open source company, even if they keep their main revenue-producing technology closed.

So what exactly is an open source company then? You know Microsoft runs the CodePlex open source project hosting and hosts quite a lot of open source projects that they have done and use there, but i wouldn't call them and 'open source company' and they - like google - keep their main revenue-producing technology closed.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, if he's going up against other engines, wouldn't it behoove him to use the other code to anticipate their moves and then use that to determine his own?

Even running their code and then a layer on top, would excusable and result in high percentage of code similarity also.

I'm not seeing the problem here. The other code was open source. If I know the enemy's playbook, and input it wholesale in my code, and run my code based on that code, I'd call that being smart, not cheating.

btw, how do you plagiarize an open source program when you haven't distributed it outside of your own uses? I thought most licenses allow internal and personal code changes without accreditation. A chess competition is about the results. I don't see anywhere where he published or sold his code. If so, he _has not released it as as work_ and is not even subject to license violation, and even not copyright violation--isn't this even exactly what fair use is?

Re:The obvious question

[jacekm]

I wonder if you had the same opinion when Linux ripped off Unix. I always found Linux commands to be too similar to Unix commands to be pure conicidence.

JAM

Re:The obvious question

[TapeCutter]

You're wrong about the copyright but that's irrelevant, they banned him for breaking competition rules, not copyright law.

Re:The obvious question

[sessamoid]

I don't think you understand what the word "plagiarism" means.

Re:The obvious question

[sgbett]

more like 40 billion 404's ;)

Re:The obvious question

[SnapShot]

However the taps are a derivative work; one that is neither a satire nor used for educational purposes. The taps, therefore, are not within the bounds of fair use and thus all your foot are belong to Lars.

Wait, what was the question again?

Re:The obvious question

[samoanbiscuit]

Note: I am not parent or GP.

Seriously, have you perhaps considered briefly familiarizing yourself with the obvious facts surrounding an issue before mindlessly commenting on it?

Now what would be the fun in that?

Re:The obvious question

[Moryath]

Nonsense. Moving a pawn less than the full two on a first move serves only to give up tempo. Likewise the suicidal trapping of a knight by moving it to a place where it has no chance to even threaten the center properly within three moves.

I should have used the word "pieces" rather than "moves", but my point remains: anything but a center pawn start is essentially giving up the game, as the last 500 years of play and analysis have already shown.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the copyright lobby should be pushing the idea that all programs should be open-source, so that they can be properly checked for copyright violations.

Re:The obvious question

[superwiz]

Putting 2 engines together is original code from where I stand. So point (b) is moot. (see all the posts under the total is bigger than the sum-total of the parts)

Re:The obvious question

[superwiz]

Plagiarism is passing someone else's work as your own. He didn't do that. Putting together something out of components made by others and saying that the end product was made by you does not amount to plagiarism. Oh, and don't attribute disagreement to ignorance unless you know you are talking to someone with less than grade-school education. You'll pump your rage, but you won't convince anyone of anything by doing it.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Try here: http://arctrix.com/nas/chess/fruit/

The version in question, Fruit 2.1 appears to be GPL.

Re:The obvious question

[EETech1]

It sounds like it was good enough, and that was the problem:)

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

First, he did publish Rybka binaries. So he did distribute the code. Without attribution. And it doesn't really matter _how_ Fruit's code was used.

Second, submitting to competition means that you are bound by competition's plagiarism rules. If you use their evaluation rules even as a way to predict reactions, you have to disclose use of code written by others in your submission.

Third, they reverse engineered Rybka. It does use Fruit's evaluation function as its own.

Whether the array of evidence is enough for copyright infringement lawsuit and whether reverse engineering would make acceptable evidence here, I don't know. But ICGA used high enough standard of evidence for answering whether Rybka uses others' algorithms - their decision is well-founded enough for a competition jury decision.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could represent x86 code as mathematical formulas it computes and compare the resulting formulas for common subformulas. Then find out that there are more matches than differences. Then publish a report on this. Then use it as only part of evidence... And that was so.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, precisely, should the Rybka team have to pay for that? It's the ICGA that should have been the ones doing this. FIRST.

They shouldn't.

Rules say: ICGA has the right to analyze source code to check whether a program is plagiarized. Rybka team would not have to pay for anything - they would have to respond and provide source code to a party appointed by ICGA. They didn't. So ICGA appointed people to analyze binaries.

Binary analysis can prove you have the same set of mathematical formulas at very least. And most of the time, it can say some more. And you don't usually guess most of competitor's formulas exactly (and some more approximately) by dumb luck when many of them are unique for one open-source entry.

Re:The obvious question

[rtfa-troll]

Well, we could argue about the definition of "original" and get nowhere because the dictionaries use it one way and you use it a different one and you will never agree. Or, we could go and look at the actual rules of the competition which say:

Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their submission details.

Where the "derived from or including" pretty clearly applies to putting two engines together. Which means that your definition is irrelevant becuse he hasn't made the needed declaration.

Re:The obvious question

[harlows_monkeys]

They also based it on disassembling Rybka and comparing it to Crafty and Fruit.

Re:The obvious question

[harlows_monkeys]

First of all, the code he's alleged to have copied didn't come from GPL programs. Second, GPL is not incompatible with commercial products. See the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux for an example of a GPL commercial product.

Re:The obvious question

[Narcogen]

If he was just ripping off two other engines, why did his win?

Sounds like he at least made improvements to them, and isn't that what open source is supposed to be all about? In fact, the article even acknowledges "ICGA isn’t even disqualifying Rybka because it copies Fruit — rather, it’s simply upset that Rajlich claims his engine is original, and refuses to give credit where it’s due." Okay, so maybe he should have given the other coders credit, but why should that disqualify him from winning? He still won. He didn't cheat. He didn't steal the code from the other engines (it was open source). His biggest offense is denying the other coders credit.

Under the rules of the tournaments he entered, that is cheating. The entry form must list the sources of any non-original code. The author claimed none, violating the license under which that code was distributed, as well as violating the terms of entry into the contest. When faced with previous questions about the origin of his program's code, as well as an unprecedented strength increase in a single year (800 ELO points) the author responded that his work was wholly original-- not that it was strong because it combined code from two other programs.

(At any rate it appears he did not do so; he was using functions from one program, crafty, and then changed to fruit later. Decompilation showed similarities to large portions of non-functional and obseleted code in crafty, which is fairly convincing even without access to source. When asked about the dramatic change in score, the "author" claimed not to have thrown out his codebase, but to have made incremental changes, but decompilation shows that also to be false.)

Re:The obvious question

[Narcogen]

How would you explain a high degree of correspondence between the target program and large portions of unused and obselete code in another open source program?

Re:The obvious question

[Narcogen]

Plagiarism is passing someone else's work as your own. He didn't do that. Putting together something out of components made by others and saying that the end product was made by you does not amount to plagiarism. Oh, and don't attribute disagreement to ignorance unless you know you are talking to someone with less than grade-school education. You'll pump your rage, but you won't convince anyone of anything by doing it.

Saying that the end product was made by you and ONLY by you certainly does amount to plagiarism. That's why code distributed under open source licenses usually obligates you to include that license when you distribute, as well as to credit the original source. The individual in question here did neither. He claimed the work was only his own, and was original. When the entry form asks him to list what other projects he has taken or derived code from, he listed none, so he entered the contests under false pretenses.

Then, he takes his work closed source and commercial, selling it in violation of the license of Fruit without attribution or compensation.

Are people here really trying to defend this guy, or has everyone just not bothered to read the article or the report?

Re:The obvious question

[Narcogen]

Putting 2 engines together is original code from where I stand. So point (b) is moot. (see all the posts under the total is bigger than the sum-total of the parts)

For the love of pete... read the report. The author did not do this. Early versions of the program were cribbed from one source. Later versions were cribbed from another, resulting in a dramatic change in performance in a short space of time, while the "author" denied discarding large portions of his codebase, even though decompilation indicates this is exactly what happened.

Reordering statements does not prove that a program is more than the sum of its statements; it means that the definition of a statement can only be comprehended within the context of a whole.

Re:The obvious question

[Narcogen]

It was cheating because the entry form for the competition says you need to disclose the source of any code you've borrowed or derived from other projects. As well, the projects that it is claimed he did borrow from are distributed under a custom open source license that prohibits the use of the code in competitions.

Also, he sells his code as a commercial product, distributed as a binary, without source.

Re:The obvious question

[superwiz]

I am not "really" trying to defend him. I don't know him nor do I care. I am only interested in the abstract notion of where the plagiarism line gets crossed. Certainly, if was asked to list other projects he derived from, he'd have to list them. Copyright terms of open source license have nothing to do with plagiarism. They are only related to IP rights. The guys work WAS, however, original. If his program beat others, then his work was ahead of the work of others. (even if it was derived from the work of others). He may have violated the terms of the contest, but it wasn't plagiarism.

Re:The obvious question

[gorzek]

For the umpteenth time: Rybka is available for sale on its website. Is that not "distribution" in your world? I swear, nobody reads the articles, the comments, or does even the slightest bit of research here before spouting off.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

If I and Kasparov make the same moves in the same situations, am I guilty of stealing his strategies?

Probably.

Let's be realistic... you're not Kasparov. You don't play like Kasparov. Any panel of chess experts should be able to tell the difference between you and Kasparov.

Re:The obvious question

[Rockoon]

Whether optimization burns all information concerning the order of local declarations really depends upon the compiler.

VC++, GCC, ICC

All of them BURN the information. Be it either the AST or 3AC methods, after syntax checking, there is no longer even a list of local variables used. Instead there is a list of operations and destinations the compiler needs in order to perform the calculations that satisfy all intentional external side effects (globals, return values), which is not correlated at all with the list of declared variables.

You are right that locals may end up in registers, but you dont seem to know why that is. Its because the entire idea of a local variable as defined by the source IS THROW AWAY. The source code doesnt matter. Only the side effects matter.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Stealing and plagarism arent quite the same. If I submitted Ubuntu code as my own for class, I wouldnt have stolen it because it's open source but you can bet my prof would slam me for plagarism.

Re:The obvious question

[Risen888]

FWIW, I really like opening with 1. a4. It's unorthodox, but I like to pull it out sometimes to disorient opponents. The basic object of the opening is to eventually bring about a5 and Ra4; if you can get that far, a rook sitting on a4 can be a real terror.

I'm not trying to argue your point though, because you are generally correct, especially in computer chess, 1. a4 is ridiculous.

Re:The obvious question

[Risen888]

(Not the OP)

Yes, in theory. But Na3 and Nh3 are non-starters because they really block up your knights, as well as the pieces behind them.

Re:The obvious question

[Risen888]

He must have distributed the binary to compete. He just didn't distribute it to you.

Re:The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source code comes with some copy rights (copy left ).
Using the Open Source code without attribution is stealing.
Some Open Source code requires also that everything written using it
stays Open Source. So it appears that Rybka violated the copy-left and
stole the code.
  It is great that they improved it, but it doesn't makup for stealing.

straight shooter with upper management written all

[Joe_Dragon]

Taking credit for others work is just part of the job!

Best chess engine

[Arlet]

No Rybka, but Houdini:

http://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.htm

Rybka/Houdini played a 40-game match recently, and Houdini won by a wide margin of 23.5-16.5. You can see the match here:
http://livechess.chessdom.com/site/ (Check for TCEC S1 Elite Match)

Re:Best chess engine

[Mindcontrolled]

To be honest, since the advent of computers in chess I lost most of my interest - even in human tournaments. Every top player does lots of preparation by computer analysis these days. If I want to see some interesting and creative games, I usually grab a commented tournament book from the 20s or so, whenever I get my hands on one.

Re:Best chess engine

[Skuto]

Houdini is based on another open-source engine (Ippolit / RobboLito), which are based on reverse engineering Rybka, which is, well, see the original statement (the article is hopelessly biased and gets some facts wrong).

It's a mess.

Re:Best chess engine

[shutdown -p now]

But reverse engineering isn't plagiarizing, nor is it illegal.

Re:Best chess engine

[Anonymous Coward]

and the Rybka author complains of Houdini stealing from him... and so it goes...

http://rybkaforum.net/

Re:Best chess engine

[Skuto]

I'm not saying it is. I'm giving credit where credit is due.

Re:Best chess engine

[jthill]

I'm not saying it is. I'm giving credit where credit is due.

tftfy

Re:Best chess engine

[koreaman]

Do you also find horse races uninteresting since cars (which can win any race against a horse) were invented?

Re:Best chess engine

[Mindcontrolled]

Do the horses use cars to prepare for the race? No? Thought so. I still go out to the local track to place some bets once or twice a year. It's not that computers can win against humans which puts me off these days, it's that human playing gets shaped by computers, by means of extensive analysis offloaded to the machine.

Re:Best chess engine

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, Houdini is a derivative of Ippolito, which is a reverse-engineered derivative of Rybka.

This is very easy to verify

[TheSpoom]

If the author still claims his software is original, he should release the source code to the panel under an NDA strictly for the purposes of evaluation.

Re:This is very easy to verify

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

If the author still claims his software is original, he should release the source code to the panel under an NDA strictly for the purposes of evaluation.

Except that would open the members of the panel up to potential future claims that they plagiarized from Rybka. They should have an independent third-party, one that does not write chess engines, audit the three software programs under NDA and return an analysis of how likely it is that Rybka includes code from the other engines (a la SCO vs. IBM.)

Re:This is very easy to verify

[HaZardman27]

Until this third party panel, now equipped with knowledge of the inner workings of three competitive chess engines, develops the most powerful chess engine known to man! ...And then gets charged with plagiarism.

Re:This is very easy to verify

[elrous0]

According to the article the panel is actually made up of his competitors, past and present. An NDA won't cut it (certainly wouldn't for me anyway). They should have at least given him a more impartial jury.

Re:This is very easy to verify

[Skuto]

The panel was made up of every computer chess expert the organization could get their hands on, which of course included competitors.

But if he wanted to avoid those, he could have proposed to send his source to a neural subselection.

He didn't reply at all. What could he say? The full reports are posted, and they're completely damning. I guess the writer of the article linked here didn't manage to understand that.

Re:This is very easy to verify

[Anonymous Coward]

There are members of the panel who are not Chess programmers. The code would not need to be submitted to all members.

Re:This is very easy to verify

[gknoy]

Oh, come on, what are the odds of some company like IBM building a chess engine?

Re:This is very easy to verify

[Anonymous Coward]

The PDF even has one professional asking for exactly that kind of inspection.

Also keep in mind Ken Thompson was one of the members of the panel, as well as a number of other third party software professionals, so imho the bias really isn't there for 'a buncha sore losers' doing this out of spite.

I do however find it sad that this sort of auditing isn't done on a more regular basis to winning entries. They do it in nascar, indy, and formula 1, you'd sure expect them to do it in the computer chess equivalent of that.

Rybka ... Or Skynet?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Now that it isn't distracted by chess this poor little computer will have nothing else to do except plot its revenge against man.

Re:Rybka ... Or Skynet?

[X86Daddy]

Oddly enough, the word "Rybka" in Indo-Ukranian translates as "Net of the Sky."

Re:Rybka ... Or Skynet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, the word "Rybka" in Indo-Ukranian translates as "Net of the Sky."

hmm not too sure of the validity of this statement. I got "little fish" in czech

Re:Rybka ... Or Skynet?

[dotgain]

Czech, mate?

Re:Rybka ... Or Skynet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, the word "Rybka" in Indo-Ukranian translates as "Net of the Sky."

He ripped of the name as well? This guy Rajlich is unstoppable

Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[Benfea]

What is relevant is whether or not he had permission to use that code, which he obviously did not.

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

The source is open. Anyone has permission to use the code.
Dumbass.

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[KDR_11k]

I don't think you understand what open source means... Especially once you add Microsoft into the mixture.

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[yincrash]

You don't have permission to use code in any way you see fit unless you have a license to do so. In the same way, I have several dvds, but I don't have permission to post them all over the Internet.

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[cptdondo]

Your house is unlocked. Anyone can use it. Dumbass.

Open Source - "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"

Just because something is released under an open source license doesn't mean anyone can copy it. Copyright doesn't go away just because you release something under an open source license.

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[hedwards]

He had permission to use the source, it's GPL, since he didn't redistribute binaries he didn't need to provide the source.

Unfortunately, since the source wasn't available, it's hard to really know whether or not those programs were plagiarized, I'm not sure how one would know without having access to the source. This would be a little bit like charging somebody with plagiarism with only access to a retelling of the paper or story.

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[Arlet]

since he didn't redistribute binaries he didn't need to provide the source

He's using a funny way of not redistributing binaries, then:

http://www.rybkachess.com/index.php?auswahl=Purchase+Rybka

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[Fnkmaster]

A) As was already pointed out, he sells the binary engine, so he did redistribute it.

B) The rules of the competition require disclosure of any used third party libraries or components. Since he didn't disclose this usage, he violated the competition rules regardless of whether he was complying with the license conditions or not.

Re:Whether he improved on them is irrelevant

[zill]

There are plenty of links on his site to download the binary from.

Also submitting his binary into a chess competition is distribution.

Proper Punishment

[alphatel]

The correct course of action is erasure, following by enlightenment retraining.

Re:Proper Punishment

[Miseph]

"The correct course of action is erasure"

Always I want to be with you, and make believe with you, and live in harmo... oh, wait, wrong Erasure.

Re:Proper Punishment

[Bobb Sledd]

That's still proper punishment.

Should be easy to prove innocence

[JustinOpinion]

TFA points out that Rajlich could exonerate himself by showing the source code, but then says that this isn't possible:

It’s a tricky situation, though: with Rybka now outlawed from the WCCC, and with the ICGA asking other tournaments to block its entry, the only real way Rajlich and the rest of the Rybka team can clear their names is to show their source code — a financially untenable move. In short, Rybka is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

This doesn't really hold up. Yes, Rajlich is trying to sell his software, so he can't open-source it to the world. But to exonerate himself he doesn't have to release the source-code to the world; he simply needs to arrange for the source code to be shown to the expert panel. As long as they can both confirm that: (1) the provided source compiles to the binary used in competition, and (2) there is no substantial overlap between the provided source and other known codebases, then he's in the clear. The expert panel doesn't have to retain copies of the source code beyond the review period (all copies could be destroyed).

So, really, it should be possible for Rajlich to demonstrate the originality of his code without releasing it or decreasing his commercial opportunities. The fact that he hasn't done this is strange. In that sense, it sounds to me like the ICGA made the right decision here.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Shikaku]

I have an honest question. I'm going to assume the program is compiled into an executable, and not a scripting language like python. How do they determine if code from an open source program was used from the binary program?

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Nemyst]

From what I gathered from glancing at TFA, the panel was looking at algorithmic similarities, not necessarily code ones. In those cases, there is no need to have the source, since the algorithms will naturally be visible through the program's execution.

From this point on, Rajlich will need to prove that he did not in fact copy Fruit or Crafty, though this may be hard to do so if the above is to be trusted (ie he could've made his own code but used the exact same behaviors by simply looking at how Fruit worked). He'd most likely need to rewrite all offending parts from scratch, and then provide full source to the panel so that they could analyze it. Validation can be done through a binary comparison of Rajlich's executables against the panel's own, built from the given source code. There may be differences, but they should be small enough.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[digitig]

He doesn't even have to show the code to the expert panel (who are all competitors). He could agree with the panel an independent arbitrator, and show it to them. I don't think they'd have to be experts in the field of chess programming to spot copied code, and it shouldn't matter if he's copied algorithms.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[vlm]

But to exonerate himself he doesn't have to release the source-code to the world; he simply needs to arrange for the source code to be shown to the expert panel.

Alternately, they could deploy several classic crypto solutions, which means they're easy to half ass and screw up.

There's a couple good crypto algorithms to hash the unknown and known source code, compare the hashes, etc. No need to let anyone directly read the unknown source code.

To prove he's not handing you hashes of /dev/random you can compile the code, see if it matches his binary.

Besides simple hash comparisons, there are some digital cash algos oriented around detecting double spending... You could probably hack that into working.

Run the comparison on a neutral ground virtual machine with no mass storage just a huge amount of ramdisk. Tell both sides how to prepare the VM (probably via a script) and trade hashes of parts of the VM with each other to verify neither side modified anything.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[chuckugly]

But to exonerate himself he doesn't have to release the source-code to the world; he simply needs to arrange for the source code to be shown to the expert panel.

"All but your four fastest you mean." An expert panel composed of his top competitors. Hmmm. What could go wrong?

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize who the panel is right? "found guilty by a panel of 34 chess engine programmers". They are his competitors, and you cant force them to 'destroy' the copies of the good ideas they will keep in their heads after reading.

Also, I'm no lawyer but I looked at both website and they don't contain a license of any kind. One is labeled as freeware, the other just says 'click here to download' and the files have no notices. So it sounds to me like he is in compliance with the requirements of the authors. I don't know what the rules of the contest are he submitted to but he certainly shouldn't have any legal problems with selling the code. I think this is a great example of what open source is all about, sharing innovations. Its a shame he doesn't want to share his, but the people who released the code chose not to license it.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Yeah, TFA sounds pretty seriously confused on that point. Commercial software sourcecode is, in part or in full, shown to Customers Who Matter all the time. Sometimes, it is even made publicly available, but under a license that forbids much of anything other than inspecting it. It isn't rocket surgery.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[vlm]

I have an honest question. I'm going to assume the program is compiled into an executable, and not a scripting language like python. How do they determine if code from an open source program was used from the binary program?

Compile it with debugging symbols and compare to the open source program compiled with debugging symbols and compare the symbol tables. How odd that so many functions are exactly the same length and have exactly the same arguments. Run both thru a profiler and notice any identical control flow loops. I suspect there's a way to ask the GCC optimizer to compare the psuedocode before it gets assembled. Heck, just rub the raw binaries against each other and look for matches. It would be hilarious to ask/force him to compile and/or link mixmaster style

Ask a "windows security researcher" dude how he identifies a file with a virus. If he says, "use norton" then fire him and repeat. Eventually you'll find someone who knows how to use the binary equivalent of "substr".

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[rwv]

How do they determine if code from an open source program was used from the binary program?

This would be determined by isolating a version of the executable used in competition and then asking the developers to run through a procedure using only the source code to create an exact duplicate of the competition binary. Comparing that the 1's and 0's in two different executables are identical is fairly trivial.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[elrous0]

Yeah, but the expert panel in this case includes many of his competitors. It would be like Apple being forced to show MS their source code, with the promise that MS wouldn't steal it.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[vlm]

spot copied code, and it shouldn't matter if he's copied algorithms.

Isn't copied algorithms the stereotypical way to catch programming school plagiarizers? Why look, one smart-ish guy, and his three moron drinking buddies, all had exactly the same picket fence error in exactly the same place... What a coincidence? This does not work on tiny toy programs, but something big enough to win at chess is probably big enough.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Altus]

The expert panel is comprised of his competition. They are the very people he wants to keep from seeing his code.

The only way this could be done is with an impartial third party audit... but who pays for it?

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[goffrie]

If there's no license, then by default all rights belong to the owner only i.e. you have no license to do anything with it (except as allowed by fair use, which doesn't include making a derivative work and then selling it)

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

The problem with looking at just algorithm similarities is that every modern chess bot uses some variant of the same algorithm so the executable code will superficially look similar (negamax.) Computers aren't powerful enough to search the entire game tree, so you have to stop after a certain number of levels (15, for instance) and use a heuristic to evaluate the strength of that position.

The main differences between chess bots are found in that heuristic.

According to the actual report the heuristic is obviously based on Fruit's, which is what they're really angry about.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Skuto]

So it sounds to me like he is in compliance with the requirements of the authors.

One of the programs is GPL-ed. The other doesn't allow it to be entered in competitions without permission.

Fail on both.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Rockoon]

From what I gathered from glancing at TFA, the panel was looking at algorithmic similarities, not necessarily code ones.

This is pretty bizarre, considering that for the most part every chess engine uses algorithms that other engines use. For instance, every single one of them uses Zobrist Hashing (there is no alternative that is even close, performance-wise.) A great many use imperfect hash tables (often no collision detection at all!) Piece-Square tables? Yeah they all do that. About half use Bit Boards while most of the rest use a 10x8 scheme. And so on....

So they claim that early versions (which kicked everyones ass) were based on Crafty, and later versions (which kicked even more ass) were based on Fruit. Amazing how the author can pick up someone elses open source chess engine and make them so much better, yet nobody else in the world has demonstrated the same capability to do so.

I'm going to have to go with the theory that this panel of people have a serious conflict of interest, and that its highly likely that they have consciously or unconsciously colluded to eliminate their best rival.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[digitig]

But is the algorithm subject to copyright?

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Anonymous Coward]

Early versions were very weak. Again, please read the reports.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Anonymous Coward]

the keyword in your sentence is "based on", maybe they should kick every bot from competition because they are using known algorithms at all !
I can understand they are mad about it because the "copycat" just beat them...

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[ugen]

That panel does not consist of "friends" of his, as is clearly evident. Once shown to any outside party, source code is essentially shown to all, no matter how many nondisclosure agreements they may have signed. The only way to protect proprietary source code is to keep it proprietary and very-very secret. (Spoken from experience)

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[HTH NE1]

Unless they use the exact same compiler binary, with the same libraries, the source might not compile to the exact same object code.

And just because you have the compiler's source doesn't mean its binary can be created unless it is compiled with the same compiler the original compiler was compiled with, and so on.

Specifically, Ken Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust.

It would also be trivial to create a compiler that produces unique object code each time the same source code is compiled while having the code be functionally equivalent, all the while also hiding this capability from the compiler's source.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Anonymous Coward]

Inaccurate -- read the report, not just the article. Binary comparison was done, and the executables come up 60% identical -- including dead code.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Anonymous Coward]

No -- but the charge is plagarism, not copyright violation.

Though the case for copyright violation is *extremely* clear-cut -- there's no explaining away dead code that's a 1:1 match.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[EETech1]

I wonder if IBM ever entertained the thought of having Watson play chess?!

Would it have enough resources to have every possible outcome (of every possible game) in its working memory simultaneously?

Any thoughts?

Cheers!

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[harlows_monkeys]

I have an honest question. I'm going to assume the program is compiled into an executable, and not a scripting language like python. How do they determine if code from an open source program was used from the binary program?

They took sections from the open source programs where those programs did things in particularly clever or unique ways (such as some special checks Crafty did to optimize its handling of en passant captures, and things like that), then found the corresponding code in a disassembly of of the binary program, and compared them. The disassembly appeared to be doing the exact same thing in exactly the same way--it looked in fact like what you'd get from a compiler compiling the open source code.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Narcogen]

So they claim that early versions (which kicked everyones ass) were based on Crafty, and later versions (which kicked even more ass) were based on Fruit. Amazing how the author can pick up someone elses open source chess engine and make them so much better, yet nobody else in the world has demonstrated the same capability to do so.

Because the license of Crafty and Fruit expressly prohibit that activity. In other words, it's not that nobody else has demonstrated that capability-- it's that everyone else has complied with the license. Not to mention the fact that he'd have to expose the fact that he borrowed or derived code from those projects when he submitted his entry, and he did not, claiming instead that it was completely original, while filing complaints against other groups that were already doing the same to him (Ippolit).

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[OldBus]

It isn't possible. See the "Mathematics and Computers" section of the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChessChess article.

According to that article there are approx 10^123 positions in the game-tree. Given that there are about 10^78 atoms in the visible universe, building enough memory to store all the outcomes of a chess game is tricky...

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Rockoon]

Because the license of Crafty and Fruit expressly prohibit that activity. In other words, it's not that nobody else has demonstrated that capability-- it's that everyone else has complied with the license.

The license for FRUIT 2.1 (GPL) definitely does not prohibit the activity of making a better engine. Why do you feel the need to make things up in order to support your beliefs?

These are some of the engines forked from Fruit 2.1:

Toga 2
GrapeFruit
Cyclone
GambitFruit

Now what point were you trying to refute here? Oh yes, that nobody is making a substantially better engine than Fruit based off of Fruit, and your refutation is that the license prohibits it.

So we see that the meat of your refutation.. all of it.. was made up by you! Whats that about? Why you making shit up bro?

Not to mention the fact that he'd have to expose the fact that he borrowed or derived code from those projects when he submitted his entry

Facts not in evidence. There is an accusation, which you are declaring as fact. Nobody else in the world has made an engine even close to as good as this guys engine when they start with Fruit 2.1. Could it be that this guy didnt start with Fruit 2.1? It looks that way.

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Geminii]

I wonder how easy it would be to spaghettify and obscure a set of source code, and write a corresponding compiler which would turn it into the required binary? How good are the expert panel in spotting and unraveling deliberate obfuscations?

Re:Should be easy to prove innocence

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the expert panel comprised of Rajlich's main competitors and therefore the same programmers who would have most to gain from seeing the code?

Not again!

[Translation Error]

It's the Turk all over again! Will these chess computer scandals never end?!

Re:Not again!

[GJSchaller]

Don't you mean it's this Turk?

Hmmm...no comparison of source codes

[mschaffer]

Since Rybka's source was not released, let alone compared, they sure seem sure of their conclusions.

Also, the article states that they "unfairly cheated" but, aside from not disclosing the alleged plagiarized work, why is that "unfair". Or is the use of the open source codes considered "unfair".

Re:Hmmm...no comparison of source codes

[Arlet]

The rules of the International Computer Games Association that hosts the championship state that the program must be an original work of the developers. If the program is derived from other sources, they must be named together with the original authors.

Re:Hmmm...no comparison of source codes

[digitig]

Also, the article states that they "unfairly cheated" but, aside from not disclosing the alleged plagiarized work, why is that "unfair". Or is the use of the open source codes considered "unfair".

More interesting is how does one cheat fairly?

Re:Hmmm...no comparison of source codes

[MysteriousPreacher]

What aside is there? It's fairly clear that his claiming the work of others as his own is the issue.

Here's a quote from the an open letter announcing the ban.

"Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their submission details."

Open source is fine - so long as credit is given.

Re:Hmmm...no comparison of source codes

[mschaffer]

If the panel hasn't seen the code, how do they know it was derived from anything else?

Re:Hmmm...no comparison of source codes

[Skuto]

Reverse engineering.

Re:Hmmm...no comparison of source codes

[Minwee]

More interesting is how does one cheat fairly?

By crediting your references properly, so that everyone else can use them to cheat too.

NDA's dont' mean jack ****

[mschaffer]

Many people choose not to disclose their inventions and keep them a trade secret. This is done for a good reason. Disclosure, even under an NDA, doesn't guarantee it won't get disclosed to those you don't want to disclose it to.

In this case we have a panel of 34 programming chess players. Would you want anyone of that group to see your code if you want to keep it away from programming, chess-playing people?

Crafty isn't open source software (Fruit 2.1 is)

[dwheeler]

Crafty is not open source software, though its license has similarities to an open source software license. Crafty is for "personal use only", which means that it fails the Open Source Definition criteria "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor".

Crafty's main.c file says: "All rights reserved. No part of this program may be reproduced in any form or by any means, for other than your personal use, without the express written permission of the authors. This program may not be used in whole, nor in part, to enter any computer chess competition without written permission from the authors. Such permission will include the requirement that the program be entered under the name "Crafty" so that the program's ancestry will be known."

Fruit up to 2.1 is open source software (GPL)

Oblig.

[Bobfrankly1]

Checkmate?

Oops. Crafty and Fruit, not Fruity

[wolrahnaes]

Oops, my brain mashed up the two likely ripped off engines in to one. Crafty and Fruit, not Fruity.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I RTFA and have a question about Deep Blue

[sirwired]

The article makes the bold claim that "IBM's Deep Blue cheated to beat Garry Kasparov" the link they give mentions merely that Kasparov made such an accusation, and that the accusation was repeated in a documentary. On what basis did he make such a claim?

Re:I RTFA and have a question about Deep Blue

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

On the basis that he lost. Really. Kasparov thought Deep Blue was making moves that were too 'human-like,' and therefore it must have been fed moves from human players.

You see similar reactions from poker players. Humans don't want to believe that computers are capable of bluffing convincingly, but even simplistic alpha-beta poker bots are perfectly able to do it.

Re:I RTFA and have a question about Deep Blue

[Anonymous Coward]

The consensus in the computer chess community is that Kasparov's claim doesn't hold any water. He complained about a specific move, arguing that a machine could not have come up with it, but several programs at the time also selected that move.

Re:I RTFA and have a question about Deep Blue

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, the programmers of deep blue altered the opening algorithm between games.

Re:I RTFA and have a question about Deep Blue

[hedwards]

The basis was that the programming was allegedly changed mid way through the match. Which was forbidden under the terms of that were agreed upon beforehand. I don't personally know how strong or what the evidence was that they were changing the algorithms between matches, but that would be cheating.

Or at least that's my understanding of that. I'm not much into chess at that level.

Re:I RTFA and have a question about Deep Blue

[mschaffer]

They were allowed to do this under the rules of the tournament.
Kasparov blew it twice. He screwed up a move near the beginning and failed to see how he could eventually come to a draw.

Re:I RTFA and have a question about Deep Blue

[Anonymous Coward]

The article makes the bold claim that "IBM's Deep Blue cheated to beat Garry Kasparov" the link they give mentions merely that Kasparov made such an accusation, and that the accusation was repeated in a documentary. On what basis did he make such a claim?

He lost! That's the basis. The only other times was when he lost earlier in his career to Karpov, but there, he accused the CPSU of rigging the competition.

Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[mschaffer]

Maybe chess-playing people just don't like losing to computers. After all, the article mentioned by the OP states that:

Not since IBM’s Deep Blue cheated to beat Garry Kasparov in 1997 has the world of computer chess been so uproarious!

As if it were a fact. Was this ever found to be the case? I thought it was only alleged by Kasparov and never proven.
Since the 34-person panel of chess-playing programmers never saw the source code to Rybka, yet still concluded that different versions were plagiarizer different open source codes, maybe the chess-playing community is a bunch of whining losers?

An interesting note is that the article doesn't state if any of the 34-person panel of chess-playing programmers contributed code to any of the allegedly plagiarized codes. There may be a conflict of interest here.

Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

Humans haven't been able to compete against computers for quite a few years. Even a cheap netbook can plow through more levels of the game tree than Deep Blue could, and Deep Blue was even using custom hardware specifically designed for chess. It's not a simple case of a sore loser.

Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[The MAZZTer]

How the hell do you cheat at chess when you don't know what moves the other person is going to make? Unless Deep Blue made an illegal move, which Kasparov should have immediately caught.

Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[Arlet]

Even chess programs running on smart phones have reached grandmaster levels. In 2009, Pocket Fritz 4 running an on HDC touch won the Copa Mercosur tournament in Buenos Aires with 9 wins and a draw, and a 2898 performance rating.

Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[mschaffer]

Kasparov thought that people were helping Deep Blue during the game. That would be cheating.

Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe chess-playing people just don't like losing to computers. After all, the article mentioned by the OP states that:

Not since IBM’s Deep Blue cheated to beat Garry Kasparov in 1997 has the world of computer chess been so uproarious!

As if it were a fact. Was this ever found to be the case? I thought it was only alleged by Kasparov and never proven.
Since the 34-person panel of chess-playing programmers never saw the source code to Rybka, yet still concluded that different versions were plagiarizer different open source codes, maybe the chess-playing community is a bunch of whining losers?

An interesting note is that the article doesn't state if any of the 34-person panel of chess-playing programmers contributed code to any of the allegedly plagiarized codes. There may be a conflict of interest here.

The report cited in the article did show this. One panel member (Robert Hyatt) wrote Crafty, one of the plagiarized programs. Please read the reports.

Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[PacoSuarez]

An interesting note is that the article doesn't state if any of the 34-person panel of chess-playing programmers contributed code to any of the allegedly plagiarized codes. There may be a conflict of interest here.

Yes, at least Bob Hyatt (author of Crafty) was a member of the panel. I have a lot of respect Dr. Hyatt and I am not suggesting that the panel's conclusions are wrong: I am just providing the data you were requesting.

Re:Whining, chess-playing, sore losers!

[rahvin112]

The only reason he thought that is because in the first match (or test match, don't remember) he discovered a weakness and exploited it and beat deep blue handily. In the second match he tried to exploit the same weakness and the computer made a super subtle attack on his attempt to exploit the weakness and once he realized what happened he was in deep shit, then he started second guessing everything the computer did that appeared like a weak move. In the third round he was so spooked by the second round that he played terribly and was pretty much guaranteed to lose because he spent the whole game second guessing himself. He psyched himself out of the match.

It was after that he made the accusation based simply on the fact that he didn't believe a computer could be that subtle to exploit his attempt to exploit a programming weakness. The problem is that IBM was allowed to change the code every match (so his reliance on an exploit/weakness he discovered in one game was very foolish) and secondly he was the world's best player, does he honestly believe there is some secret human on the IBM payroll that's better than him but has never played competitively and isn't known?

It was very poor sportsmanship. Honestly IBM was only in this to sell computers, and because they acted like that it cemented it in his mind that they somehow cheated. Honestly I think all major chess stars are frankly quite loony.

It's all very silly, he got his butt whooped and didn't like it and made unfounded accusations as a result.

Re:Come Clean

[TaoPhoenix]

What if someone made it financially tenable for him to show his code?

"Oh. You did in fact innovate. Okay, we're sorry. But we won't take back the reputation tsunami we unleashed on you."

Anyone see parallels with the whole DHS theme of accuse first and question later?

Why "Chess Engine" Programmers?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

First, there is the question of if he is falsely claiming credit. Second, is whether or not his is the best.

While there are nearly infinite moves in chess, there are not infinite ways of winning at chess. Last I heard, most systems use a scoring system to evaluate moves. And based on a final score tally, they make a decision. This is the "evidence" they have. But I would submit this to a group of non-chess playing programmers (who are unbiased as to who plays chess better).

Submitting the Fruit engine as the test base, compare it to the same unseen code of all programs, and let the programmers decide if ANY are copies of Fruit. Then, remove the blindfold and see if the one they all picked unanimously was Rybka.

If it can't pass a blind test, then the results have real credibility. Otherwise, yes, this is a witch hunt. The "found guilty by a panel of 34 chess engine programmers" sounds dubious. It doesn't take a "chess engine programmer" to find plagiarized code, it takes a master programmer. Knowing anything about chess engines is really just extraneous. It's not like they exist in a vacuum.

Re:Why "Chess Engine" Programmers?

[Skuto]

What you say is completely disconnected from what actually happened. The conviction didn't happen by observing the engine, the conviction happened because the panel reverse engineered the binary exacutable and found a huge similarity, including exactly identical implementations of non-obvious functions, identical bugs and identical dead code in the commercial engine and the opens source engines.

Re:Why "Chess Engine" Programmers?

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be, didn't see that in the article. Doesn't change the fact, "chess engine" programmers != reverse engineer experts, plain and simple.

Re:Why "Chess Engine" Programmers?

[jackbird]

Ken freakin' Thompson was on the panel. You wanna step to that?

Re:Why "Chess Engine" Programmers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such as Ken Thompson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson? He was on the panel that unanimously decided the investigation. http://www.chessvibes.com/plaatjes/rybkaevidence/RybkaInvestigation.pdf

I think Samuel Johnson said it best

[idontgno]

"Your [chess program] is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good."

Re:I think Samuel Johnson said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case it's the other way round; the parts that are good are original, the parts that are not original are not good.

I dunno? Sensed a disturbance in the force?

[mschaffer]

This explains it, but without an exact source:
http://blog.chess.com/clizaw/did-ibm-cheat-kasparov

He did not combine them.

[HanClinto]

He didn't even do that, he combined two separate opensource engine making one better engine.

According to the allegations, he did not combine two open-source programs into a super-bot. They claim that the current version of his bot (Rybka) is a copy of Fruit, and an earlier version of his software was a copy of Crafty.

As you said, he closed-sourced them and claimed them as his own without giving attribution -- thereby breaking the software licenses of at least one of them (Fruit), which is GPL.

WCCC desanctioning

[Anonymous Coward]

is hardly "outlawing." It is more like the Lucha Libre Federation banning a wrestler. LOL

Rajlich's way out...

[mswhippingboy]

He should just disassemble the entire executable, then show the hundreds of pages disassembled code to the panel.

"Damn right! I wrote the whole thing in uncommented, obfuscated assembler! Got a problem with that?

Case dismissed.

Re:Crafty isn't open source software (Fruit 2.1 is

[Anonymous Coward]

Crafty is not open source software, though its license has similarities to an open source software license.
Crafty is for "personal use only", which means that it fails the Open Source Definition criteria "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor".

Crafty's main.c file says: "All rights reserved. No part of this program may be reproduced in any form or by any means, for other than your personal use, without the express written permission of the authors. This program may not be used in whole, nor in part, to enter any computer chess competition without written permission from the authors. Such permission will include the requirement that the program be entered under the name "Crafty" so that the program's ancestry will be known."

Fruit up to 2.1 is open source software (GPL)

Welcome to the Crafty Chess page

Crafty 23.4 is now available. This release includes some code clean-up, a few bug fixes including a timing bug, and small strenght increase.

Crafty
Crafty is a free, open-source computer chess program developed by Dr. Robert M. Hyatt. Crafty is constantly being improved by a small team of contributors, including Dr. Hyatt. To learn more about Crafty, visit Dr. Hyatt's home page.

Really ?

Re:straight shooter with upper management written

[mschaffer]

Sad but true.

(BTW: That's a great film.)

Reggie Bush used open source code?

[mschaffer]

I didn't realize he could program.

That would be speculation.

[mschaffer]

You can reverse engineer all you want. It's still speculation.
Show me the code.

Re:That would be speculation.

[Skuto]

Show me the code.

Feel free to ask Rajlich.

Re:That would be speculation.

[fatphil]

Would you like to give a value for the probability that an off-the-shelf decompiler produces something clearly similar to the open source code that's allegedly copied? Now scale that for many many instances. And include the fact that some of the alleged copying is of data tables. And they're identical.

There are footprints, fingerprints, and hairs everywhere - that's fairly damning evidence that that open source code was at the scene of the crime. Reasonable doubt has long expired.

Trained his engine

[Culture20]

Of course it's not possible that he trained his beta engine against crafty and his new engine against fruit. That would be impossible. A panel of jealous losers from the competition has no motive to oust him.

Re:Trained his engine

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading articles is not really your strong suit.

Re:Trained his engine

[lilrobbie]

That may hold some water if the issue was just that the engine behaved similar. But we're talking binary similarities... no amount of "training" is going to make one executable look more like another. Training data is usually stored separately...

Best engine? Hardly

[alexo]

Houdini is rated higher than Rybka.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_engine#Ratings

Re:Crafty isn't open source software (Fruit 2.1 is

[gknoy]

His point was that while it may claim to be open source, the usage restrictions in their license mean that their license would not be considered "open source" by the OSI. It doesn't really matter what the Crafty web page claims, what matters is what the license claims. (It doesn't make the license invalid, either -- it just makes it Not Open Source.)

Plagiarized game program?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I'm old enough to remember when the MCP was just a chess program!

What goes around, comes around

[alexo]

What does it mean for the IPPOLIT and its derivatives, which were banned from most competitions and ratings after Rajlich accused them of being Rybka clones?

Re:What goes around, comes around

[Skuto]

They were already allowed back in a while ago. While they are clearly based on reverse engineering Rybka code, that in itself isn't illegal. I'd be nice if they acknowledged their source, but not doing that also isn't illegal (as long as you don't play the WCCC, like Rybka did!).

Always give credit where credit is due.

[Anonymous Coward]

And now we even have a song that explains what Rybka did wrong, and how they can fix it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPtH2KPuQbs

Re:Come Clean

[rtfa-troll]

Why the hell do things like this bring out all the Slashdot loonies? You people could have read the article, but you don't even have to do that. canajin56 has done it for you. They didn't just compare some moves. They actually analysed the binaries. Their case is 100% watertight. The only parallel I see with the DHS is you and a bunch of other Slashdot posters accusing them of ignorance before you have even read anything about their report.

I guess

[geekoid]

his dominoes have fallen like a house of cards.... Checkmate!

Which makes little sense

[publiclurker]

because he is claiming that rather than lose to a machine, he lost to another human. Just how many human chess players out there are good enough to beat him?

Re:Which makes little sense

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

It's more the fact that Deep Blue showed significant insight and long-term planning. It's not immediately obvious to most people that human-like behaviours can arise directly from a game tree.

How can you be sure it's identical?

[wandazulu]

Note: I have absolutely no position on this issue; I am not taking sides at all. My only question is how you can be certain that two programs are identical when you presumably don't necessarily know how each was compiled. Assuming all you have of rybka is a binary, but have the source to fruit, how could you be certain that you could get the code to compile in such a way as to produce identical assembly as disassembled rybka. Assuming a general standard IA32 machine, you still presumably have a lot of opportunities for variation in output from compiler to compiler, version to version, and even flags to flags.

I restate that I have no horse in this particular race; I've read of similar scenarios where a program was discovered to be a clone of another, and I've never understood how they can tell.

Re:How can you be sure it's identical?

[Draknor]

As posted previous -- here is the PDF of the report: http://www.chessvibes.com/plaatjes/rybkaevidence/Rybka_Investigation_report.pdf

Specifically see section 2. Investigation:

2.1 Executable file analysis

Quote “Rybka 1.0 Beta and Fruit 2.1 have exactly the same evaluation features“. Disassembly of the root search analysis indicates nearly identical code and variables, even including the ordering of the variables. Appendix B on the evaluation of Rybka 2.3.2a shows “the evaluation function in Rybka 2.3.2a is substantially the same as in Rybka 1.0 Beta”. Watkins compares evaluation function features between Rybka, Fruit and four other open source programs (Phalanx, Pepito, Crafty and Faile). In section D.2.3 he shows an overlap of 18.8 out of 24 evaluation terms for Rybka-Fruit (73% overlap), with much lower overlaps than between the other programs. Crafty 19.0-Fruit eval overlap: 12.9/24 = 54%, Phalanx-Fruit overlap: 43%, Pepito-Fruit overlap 37%, Faile-Fruit Overlap 23%. This has been expanded with more statistical rigour in a separate 50+ page paper mentioned in 2.4 below.

Yeah, that's just Kasparov being a sore loser

[sirwired]

I read that article. What a joke.

His "evidence":

- He thought humans must have intervened in the middle of the game because the machine did something he didn't expect. But no actual evidence whatsoever was provided for this serious charge.
- He asked for the machine's logs, but IBM refused to provide them. If he wanted the logs, he should have made that part of the agreement beforehand. IBM probably withheld them at the time to preserve secrets on exactly how the machine worked, which could have given Kasparov an advantage IBM didn't want him to have.
- IBM changed the programming between games. Which the agreement allowed it to do.
- IBM "must" have cheated because it refused to do a rematch and immediately retired the machine. What did he think Deep Blue was? A product announcement? Of course it was a publicity stunt! IBM never pretended otherwise. Did he think Poughkeepsie was going to start rolling them off the assembly line and start selling the software on the internet? Of note here is that this was around the time the RS/6000 (now pSeries) product line began to take off, eventually eclipsing Sun. (pun not intended) So the machine did exactly what it was supposed to do there...

Re:Come Clean

[sortius_nod]

You can't prove much by "analysing binaries". It's a bullshit excuse to lynch someone who took all your prize money.

Business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens every time someone takes existing OSS code and does something worthwhile with it. The community vilifies them.

Re:Business as usual

[rtfa-troll]

This happens every time someone takes existing OSS code and does something worthwhile with it. The community vilifies them.

Ah yes, of course. Except that

• this doesn't involve the "open source" community, just the chess programming community
• the guy is being done for breaking the rules of a competition, not for license violation
• getting disqualified from a programming competition for cheating is hardly worthwhile

So the question is, why are you posting these canned posts? Are your masters at Microsoft really so stupid that they pay you by the post?

Re:Come Clean

[DamnStupidElf]

Holy crap, Ken Thompson was on the panel. If that isn't proof enough that the analysis at the very least was overseen by someone who knew what they were doing, then I don't know what is.

Re:Come Clean

[rtfa-troll]

Let's see, should we take the word of Ken Thompson (yes that one), who according to the fine article seems to have been on the investigative panel, or the word of a random slashdot troll? Duhhh...

Actually neither. We should Read The Fine Reports.

Beyond the plain expression of the program, there are lots if artifacts which come through from source to binary. Even if two progammers start in the same language to develop the same algorithm to solve the same problem they will normally end up with great differences. The exceptions are the stuff of legends, and we are talking about 20 line long assembly programs. One programmer will choose an integer because it's big enough, another a long because the variable will mostly be used with other longs. This choice will not be optimised out of existence.

Looking at the report, it seems they used various different artifacts and clearly showed similarity between the programs.

Denying credit is stealing

[gweihir]

The rules are a bit different for OSS. You deny credit, you steal.

Another answer

[Dennis Sheil]

Chess engines have different components. Crafty and Fruit have their own licenses, which are not standard FLOSS. So ripping out the components Crafty does best with the components Fruit does best in violation of their copyright, and then closing it and having it proprietary - this is not rocket science, it's just disregard of licenses.

Correct... in polish it is the same (almost)

[Anonymous Coward]

Riba, & friendly diminutive = Rybka... Polish & Russian are SO CLOSE (nouns same, verbiage differs) I can pick up on Russians speaking & know a good 80% of what they're talking about (the verbs in many cases are nearly the same also).

* In fact, I couldn't speak U.S. English till I was around 4 yrs. old since my family spoke Polish @ home until I was about 10 yrs. of age!

Then, that was around the time my little brother (now a Major in the Military) came into the world, & he doesn't speak of lick of either language - which is how I verify the "Changeover @ home to English" took place in fact!

(However, unlike myself - He has all the Arabic dialects down, Urdu & others etc.)

LMAO - I learned English, lol, by watching StarTrek, from my heroes, Capt. Kirk & Mr. Spock (back then @ least)!

APK

P.S.=> I got to "exercise both" languages above, last summer when I updated my passport & took off to travel Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Russias & more)... was fun, but BOY, was I glad to be back in the Good Ole' U.S.A. though afterwards... there TRULY is "no place like home"!

... apk

Black to play and mate in three

[OverflowingBitBucket]

1. Copy Fruit code? / Develop own code
2. Copy Crafty code? / Develop own code
3. Customise code / Develop own code
4. Enter tournament / Enter tournament
5. Win tournament / Identify Plagiarism!
6. Oh crap /

Black to play and mate in three.

so what...

[Anonymous Coward]

whether or not he plagiarized, IT STILL beat the others computer players. In my head, that's what counts.

Re:The obvious answer

[EETech1]

If seen_this_link_before = 1 then
          Page_rank = page_rank +1
End if

There you go!

Re:Come Clean

[Anonymous Coward]

When what you are talking about is whether two optimised (so - unscrambled) programs calculate some complicated thing using the same formula - you have a fair chance.

I have read the report. They found a lot of arithmetically identical formulas used in two engines. Some of them were better optimised in Rybka, some of non-identical formulas were quite similar. And some of the exactly-matching formulas were unique for Fruit. No single point of evidence is watertight alone in the sense that it can be written off as unlikely coincidence, but the entire array of evidence is just too much for a simple coincidence.

Better link

[harlows_monkeys]

The submitter should have linked to this article directly. It gives a lot more detail, and at the bottom links to the actual evidence (comparisons of disassemblies with Crafty and Fruit, the reports of the experts, and such).

The (not so) obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Plagiarism. In chess. WTF are you talking about? Plain? Simple?

There is a reason plagiarism has never been illegal: it is incompatible with the notion of fairness or reality. It entirely depends on what is and is not common knowledge.

Because the phrase "common sense ain't so common" could just as easily be "common knowledge ain't so common". Which is to say anyone who claims something is or is not common is full of shit 9 times out of 10, this is not realized until long after the fact, and society would plain break down if people's lives' depended on the 1. Am I making sense to you?

code v. algorithm

[mschaffer]

What if a similar algorithm is used but the code is different?
What if an identical algorithm is used but the code is different?
What if the open source code were reverse engineered with different code?
What if.....

Also, what if the ICGA, WCCC, or any other chess found a better way to resolve this. There is a conflict of interest here.

What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Universal Studios?

Disproof by counterexample.

Re: Opening moves

[dallaylaen]

1. c4, leading to the English opening, is a perfectly valid move.

However, openings are not played by engines, but rather stored in a database. Likewise, endgames are played using more or less fixed algorithms. It's complicated positions with lots of pieces and no forced winning combination that count.