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Subject: Re: Well said !!

Author: Miguel A. Ballicora

Date: 19:36:45 02/15/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 15, 2004 at 16:58:02, Slater Wold wrote:

>On February 15, 2004 at 16:51:28, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>The Supreme Court came up with this standard long ago.

Supreme court of what country? ;-)

>The new system has to make the work easier, and be more effecient.  Period.

Not enough for "computer chess" as sport, IMHO.
Here the standards should be different, I think.

Miguel





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