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Subject: Re: definition of clones: Danchess an Crafty

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 11:12:05 02/15/04

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On February 15, 2004 at 14:08:24, Jaime Benito de Valle Ruiz wrote:

>Does that mean that we can be sued for using ideas such as using bitboards... or
>a 64 bytes array to represent the board?

You can be sued if you are innocent.  Software is an extrememly complex matter
and I doubt if 1% of judges or juries would be able to make a competent
decision.  Therefore the quality of the legal team will probably determine the
outcome.

>The only two pieces of code that I have ever copied are:
>
>  1) A few lines to read the input, because I didn't know how to do this.
>  2) A branchless assembly version of a 64-bit BSR/BSF for 32-bit processors.
>
>The implementation (but not the original ideas) of typical chess engine search /
>evaluation functions are mine... because I don't like reading other people's
>code. Do you advice to start sending lots of mails to lots of people asking for
>the permission to use their ideas if I ever decide to send my program to a
>tournament (or make it commercial)?

Yes.  It is not a legal necessity, but I think it is a good idea.  Probably, we
don't write more than one new routine a day.  That's not a lot of emails.

>All this sounds a bit extreme to me.
>
>Regards,
>
> Jaime

Like any idea, it has both a positive and negative aspect.



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