Recently I was asked by IM David Levy to publish his article about computer cloning. Here is the follow up open letter by 14 world class chess programmers:
Open letter to the ICGA about the Rybka-Fruit issue
Dear David Levy, Jaap van den Herik and the ICGA Board,
Recently the author of Fruit, Fabien Letouzey, wrote an open letter to the computer chess community where he raised the concern that Rybka 1.0 beta may be a derivative of Fruit 2.1 in this public post.
Since then it has emerged from highly respected sources like Zach Wegner, Bob Hyatt and others that there is a lot of evidence that has been accumulated over the last few years that Rybka 1.0 beta is a derivative of Fruit 2.1.
Zach Wegner has presented evidence of alleged significant copied/derived Fruit evaluations in Rybka 1.0 beta here.
A collection of evidence of the many cases of alleged copied/derived Fruit structure, code & data appearing in Rybka 1.0 beta has been put together in this PDF by Mark Watkins.
It is also worth considering that prior to Rybka 1.0 beta, previous Rybka versions were many hundreds of Elo points weaker than the Rybka 1.0 beta version that suddenly emerged in public in December 2005, just a few months after the open source public release of Fruit 2.1 under the GPL license. That same month Rybka beta entered and won the International Paderborn Computer Chess tournament.
The evidence alleges that by using and deriving code, data and structure from Fruit 2.1, Vasik Rajlich was able to make dramatic and huge progress with “his” program Rybka to the detriment of his fellow competitors. In our view this has made competitions involving Rybka grossly unfair.
As chess programmers we find this overwhelming evidence compelling. We believe Rybka is a Fruit derivative albeit an advanced one.
It is very likely that later Rybka versions have derived and benefited from Rybka 1.0 beta and hence in the circumstances our view is they should also be considered derivatives of Fruit 2.1 until proven otherwise.
We wish to make an official complaint to the ICGA that Rybka is a Fruit 2.1 derivative. Furthermore we believe it is a breach of the GPL license under which Fruit 2.1 was released.
We believe as an unauthorized Fruit derivative Rybka’s entry into ICGA events has been contrary to the ICGA rules and the rules of fair play.
We ask the ICGA to carefully review the evidence, assess its validity, and act accordingly.
We note that the ICGA is intending on setting up a tribunal to assess such allegations and we believe this evidence should be strongly considered in that process.
In addition, we think the ICGA should in future insist that all authors of entries to ICGA events must submit to the ICGA the same executable(s), that is taking part in the ICGA event, where they can be stored for future analysis of potential derivative claims should they arise. Each author should also make a full and clear statement as to the originality of the entry, its contributors and any acknowledgements. Should justified suspicions exist authors must be willing to submit source code on a private and confidential basis to a select group of impartial programmers to privately determine source code origin.
Co-signed by the following chess programmers,
Fabien Letouzey, Zach Wegner, Mark Uniacke, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, Ed Schröder, Don Dailey, Christophe Theron, Richard Pijl, Amir Ban, Anthony Cozzie, Tord Romstad, Ralf Schäfer, Gerd Isenberg, Johannes Zwanzger
Why is this important to anyone but the principles involved?
I am happy to see that (the worst clone of them all) Vasik Rajlich comes under fire.
“Why is this important?”
– Beacuse it effects the development of computer chess. And that effects chess – a game that many are effected of.
It’s important because, if the allegations are true, someone is cheating and stealing. Cheaters and thieves deserve to be exposed and punished.
If it’s true, it means Rajlich’s program illegally violated the license under which he had access to the code. It also sheds ironic light on his shrill accusations of other programs for using “decompiled” code from Rybka and the like.
It’s NOT important in the grand scheme of things, and such offenses, IF they occurred, happend in 2005–six years ago! How can you slam Rajlich now, after he’s added hundreds of ELO points to Rybka 1.0 Beta? This is a witch-hunt by a group of men who want a closed shop in computer chess programming, and to vilify a guy who led the ranking lists for five straight years and they couldn’t touch! A pitiful display of vindictiveness all around, very disappointing.
It’s NOT important because the alleged offense took place SIX YEARS AGO and in the intervening time the accused has increased the strength of his program by OVER 450ELO POINTS above that of the Fruit version it is now said is the original source code. This is transparently an effort to besmirch the reputation of one of the best computer chess programmers in the world in order to pre-emptively deny legitimacy to the program that has supplanted Rybka as #1 on the rating lists and has left all other programs in the dust.
How can you slam Rajlich now?
Many other programmers are being slammed
and even banned (often without any proof of wrongdoing). And it so happens that
Rajlich has thrown many of the first stones in this dirty game.
But now we found a jewish guy (hopefully without blame) that is willing to trow the first big stone.
So all we are asking is: “Please Mr Levy – Hurl this very old GPL stone tablet at Rybka.”
This can be done in accordance with John 8:7 🙂
Do “men who want a closed shop in computer chess programming”
use the GPL license?
You simply do not know what you are talking about.
Ever heard about Free Software and copylefts?
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html
Sure you have heard of greedy people that profits on others work.
Vasik is one of them. He might also be a good programmer.
But how can one tell if he does’nt publish anything?