Rebel wrote:As I pointed out on several occassions in the other thread (I am still waiting for your comments) ...
I didn't realise that thread had any useful content left. I thought it was dead when Mr. Whittington opened this one. But now I see that about 60 posts have arrived since I last posted there. Maybe I will respond to them, but I am busy with other things (someone who has worked here for 10 years is leaving, we have a luncheon, he has to move stuff, etc.). The patronising tone of Mr. Whittington does not urge me to return to the subject, but I will try to do so at some point.
Rebel wrote:... there were no (addapted | new) rules, no guidance from the ICGA to the new arisen situation of exploding knowledge available for everyone with a few strikes on the keyboard and how and to what extend the "KNOWLEDGE" should and could be used.
The ICGA Journal editorial in 29/2 regarding the LION++ case (entitled
The Interpretation of Rules) was their most signficant attempt prior to the Rybka case.
Jaap van den Herik (29/2) wrote:Primarily, we see inspired and inspiring scientists standing on each other’s shoulders to design an even better device. ... Clearly, a stolen program should be excluded from competition. This is rather simple (at least in theory). A software program is tangible or material, and so it can be traced, but how about ideas? They are vague and sensible, but also understandable and many times implementable. Is there a copyright, a patent, or another legal security issue? And how would our community deal with it? ... [LION++ case details] ... For long-standing members of our community – we assume – the above the interpretation of the rules is clear. In Turin, the ICGA had the pleasure to welcome some new members who became three-year members according to the rules for participating in a WCCC. So far, we believed that the three-year rule was a rule for the continuity of the membership, now we know that this rule should be interpreted as a rule for familiarisation with the ICGA community.
Note that in his "A Very Sad Case" (ICCA Journal 34/2), Levy indicated that Rajlich should have known about the LION++ interpretation (being in Turin), and if he had questions, should have asked. Indeed, in response to what Riis wrote about Rule #2, I pointed out that most (university) plagiarism policies [relevant as he discussed the plagiarism finding] explicitly say something like "When in doubt, ask."
As various people (including myself and Gerd Isenberg) suggested, one way to "fix" the attribution problem would simply be for the ICGA to adjoin Letouzey as a "Rybka" author for the relevant ICGA entries. But this had no chance of happening once Rajlich chose to abstain from the process, to the extent of ignoring Levy's emails.
Rebel wrote:Do you really want to believe that INCREASING KNOWLEDGE doesn't affect originality?
Many things can affect originality. If anything, I would argue that increasing knowledge in computer chess actually
increases the capacity for originality. Once Letouzey had shown that a "low knowledge" EVAL could be competitive (already with Fruit 1.0 Rajlich had commented on this), there was plenty of room for exploring this idea, to what extent it could be taken, etc. Similarly, when Rajlich showed that "statisticial pruning" could be quite effective with today's (or 2005's) search depths, there were many ways to implement what was going on. Even with null move, there were (and are today) competing versions, including recursive nature, parameter tweaks (eg Heinz), when to turn it off, etc. But Rajlich largely took Fruit's (limited) EVAL knowledge, with a few replacements and additions. As Letouzey has said, it matters as much what VR
didn't use as what he did. Similarly, IPPOLIT to some extent (large in some places, smaller in others) based its pruning schemes on Rybka 3's and its eval on Kaufman's R3 work. Neither of these have been transferred to the same degree in Stockfish or Komodo, but rather new "riffs" have been appeared, in concordance with Letouzey's
extraction of a couple of ideas as is common, and normal.