Author: Jaime Benito de Valle Ruiz
Date: 11:35:09 02/15/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 15, 2004 at 14:26:00, Dann Corbit wrote: >On February 15, 2004 at 14:21:06, Jaime Benito de Valle Ruiz wrote: > >>On February 15, 2004 at 14:12:05, Dann Corbit wrote: >> >>>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. >> >>The only problem is: How do I know who should I write for every thing that I do? > >Write to the person where you got the idea. If it is from a book or a paper, >then to the book or paper author. If is is from code, then to the one who wrote >the code. If you make it up yourself, you can still be in violation (especially >for a patent). Commercial software systems will do a patent search to see if >they violate any patent ideas. > >For instance, certain types of bitmap indexes cannot be used -- even if you make >the idea up by yourself because there are several patents on bitmapped indexes. >For that reason, I never use bitmapped indexes. > >>I know who should I ask for permission if I ever implement the tablebases (and I >>will ask), but I'm not sure about the rest of the stuff. >>Thanks for the advice in any case. > >I think that a minimal courtesy that should always be extended is to at least >cite the sources from which the information came. Who owns the patent for bitboards? And what bitmapped indexes are patented? I think that using bits to represent squares is not exactly an original idea. I started programming in assembler when I was 14 y.o., and to me it seems an obvious choice to use 64 bytes registers for a 64 squares board. Rotated bitboards is another story, of course, but I don't use them anyway. Cite the sources and thank all the people who have pubished and helped with ideas goes without saying, but I doubt I can remember where did I get every single of these ideas in the first place. Is there any page with this information anywhere? Thanks again, Jaime
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