Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 13:51:28 02/15/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 15, 2004 at 16:47:14, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On February 15, 2004 at 16:07:11, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On February 15, 2004 at 15:52:35, Matthias Gemuh wrote: >> >>>On February 15, 2004 at 15:07:39, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>> >>>> >>>> >>>>Here we disagree. I see nothing wrong with starting from some known point, so >>>>long as you eventually end up with nothing but your own code... Otherwise you >>>>will spend a long time writing all the support stuff, and many lose interest >>>>before they get far enough along to actually see their creation play any real >>>>chess... >>>> >>>>IE this is where "C" came from. Changes to "B". Etc... >> >>Let's suppose that somehere in the process, your algorithms looked considerably >>similar to the ones that you started with. >> >>Then you let people use your program. Someone noticed that some data arrays in >>your program were the same as in his. >> >>A big brew-ha-ha starts. >> >>Apparently the crime committed is that enough changes were not committed yet to >>make it unrecognizable. >> >>I do not think that this is the path that DanChess did. Rather, he took ideas >>from crafty and grafted the algorithms into his program. In doing so, he had to >>make changes to each idea that he adopted. >> >>This is somehow seen as a great crime, but the other not? >> >>Puzzling to me. It is the copy/replace scheme that seems criminal to me. And >>the adoption of ideas that seems totally harmless. > > >I'll remind you once again, I copied _lots_ of ideas over the years, from >various people like Slate, Thompson, et. al. But I have never copied _any_ >source code from anyone... > >This is about source, not about ideas. They are different. > >I would have no problem whatsoever with DanChess had he did what he did, but >then evolved things to be significantly different _before_ starting to >distribute it as an original chess program. You bring up an interesting point. Not about copyright and not about algorithms. But about ownership. Not ownership of ideas or algorithms or source code, but ownership of a system. The question is this: I started with system x and made systematic changes to arrive at system y. At what point does system x.n on the way to becomeing system y become "mine" as opposed to the original owner of system x? I have no idea how such a determination might be made.
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