Author: John Merlino
Date: 15:38:43 02/15/05
I'm not trying to start a brutally long thread here, but I'm just curious about how people feel about a particularly touchy subject -- clones. What, in your mind, would lead you to the conclusion that an engine is a clone? Let's forget trying to find ways to PROVE that a clone is a clone; I'm just trying to define one. For the sake of argument, assume that the author of this engine in question tells you exactly what he did and did not do, and you must decide whether to call it a clone or not. Here are some hypothetical questions to start the debate: If the author took Crafty and completely rewrote the evaluation code and nothing else, would it be a clone? How about if the author rewrote the evaluation code and search algorithm only, but left the hashing code, et. al.? How about if the author rewrote everything EXCEPT for the evaluation? How about if the author rewrote everything EXCEPT for Crafty's evaluation of passed pawns? I think you can see where I'm driving. Obviously, many engine authors have studied Crafty and other engines whose authors have graciously provided their source code. But, for an engine to not be considered a clone, does it have to be absolutely 100% the work of the author? (Forget about Nalimov's EGTB probing code and any other code that can be used with permission). Many thanks in advance for your thoughts, jm (who's just preparing for any eventuality during his upcoming stint as moderator :-)
This page took 0.04 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.