Despite it's origins the program works well for chess players.
Rybka still being sold despite ban and alleged plagiarism
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Jun 30, 2011
0
#3
uhohspaghettio wrote:
Just because the organization responsible for computer competitions has deemed something plagiarism does not mean it automatically is. Only when something is proven in a court of law would Rybka ever be taken from the shelves, and that's the way it should be.
There is no responsibility for a shop to tell you about things that have no legal standing and no formal relation to the purchase. I could set up a committee tomorrow and say I find that Fritz is 100% plagiarized and they equally wouldn't have to tell customers about it. In fact Rybka could actually sue them for it as an attempt to smear them even though it's not been found legally. The only thing that might be unethical would be if a site selling it normally talked about such things in its news but deliberately suppressed it in case it would make you not buy it.
The makers can sue Rybka in court and if they are successful then Rybka will not longer be a commercial product. I would guess this will happen, however as yet Rybka is perfectly entitled to be sold along with all the other programs.
You can't go around and throw blemishes over people or products like that. They're innocent until proven guilty, and they weren't proven guilty by a legal power.
You make good points. You will note I was careful to include the word ALLEGED.
Plagiarism is not necessarily illegal. You should compare it to participating in a marathon run. They would surely disqualify any athlete when it turned out he did the fiirst 25 miles by cab. That does not mean it is illegal to take a cab. He can continue to do that as long and as often as pleases him. It just means that he cannot call himself a marathon runner.
HGMuller wrote:
Plagiarism is not necessarily illegal. You should compare it to participating in a marathon run. They would surely disqualify any athlete when it turned out he did the fiirst 25 miles by cab. That does not mean it is illegal to take a cab. He can continue to do that as long and as often as pleases him. It just means that he cannot call himself a marathon runner.
The marathon runner is not selling you something that doesnt belong to him---for cold hard cash. The marathon runner could win first place, a trophy and cash.
Rybka received trophies and cash prizes for winning the computer championship for the last 4 or 5 years. The organization that awarded that money wants it back (trophies too).
What if Rybka takes this to court and loses (which they probably would) and the judgement of the court is they sold to the public under false pretenses and now must return all that money to the public. What if Rybka is mandated by law to recompense those programers they stole from?
I think Rybka does not want this to go to court under any circumstaances. Getting Rybka into court is like getting Casey Anthony to testify----its a losing proposition.
I don't think Rybka would take this to court. There would be nothing they could acheive there. They subscribed to abide by the rules of the ICGA when entering Rybka in ICGA tournaments. So they cannot very well claim these rules should not be applied to them now.
Fact is that Rybka refused to provide source code when the ICGA requested it, although the tournament regulations to which they subscribed clearly specify they should. This alone is sufficient reason to ban them. It makes it irrelevant if they actually stole code. Compare an athlete that refuses to take a doping test after the race. If he doesn't take the test, it becomes irrelevant whether he is clean or not.
The originality rules applied by ICGA are much stricter than copyright law. For instance, using the same value for all evaluation parameters exactly as Fruit has them would disqualify you for ICGA, but would be perfectly legal under copyright law, if the code using these parameters was substantially different. You just calculate the same thing through a different program.
The chances that the programmers that were stolen from could be awarded financial compensation seem close to zero, because they did not suffer any real loss. If a copyrights infringement of Fruit would be concluded, it seems the worst thing that could happen is that Rybka has to disclose its source code. (Which, effectively, has already been done by people that reverse engeneered it.) There is nothing to gain by the supposedly wronged parties from that, so they are not likely to sue either, even if they could prove their case.
As HG says above, doubt that Rybka can meaningfully be taken to court in the US. Not sure the maker of a freely distributed "open source" chess program would have any meaningful cognizable legal damages from the use of their code without attribution since they never intended to make money on the program and always intended that people be permitted to freely copy and modify it.
However, I am not an expert on this area of law and it seems possible that the legal remedy of "disgorgement" could apply. Since Rybka has made a lot of money, going for "disgorgement" could be very attractive. The remedy is exactly what it sounds like -- cough up your ill gotten profits.
This controversy sounds like when Danailov wanted to be the only propietor of the rights from live games from topalov...
Rybka is a good engine, and it was taken and greatly modifyed for better (a lot better) from an open source. Take notice of open. What is questionable (if he did it) is to participate in the world championship if the rules say you cant do it. That was an ethical failure. I cant understand why they should take Rybka away from the stores.
HGMuller wrote:
Plagiarism is not necessarily illegal. You should compare it to participating in a marathon run. They would surely disqualify any athlete when it turned out he did the fiirst 25 miles by cab. That does not mean it is illegal to take a cab. He can continue to do that as long and as often as pleases him. It just means that he cannot call himself a marathon runner.
Hillarious! 
uhohspaghettio wrote:
Just because the organization responsible for computer competitions has deemed something plagiarism does not mean it automatically is.
This. It is up to the claimant to meet the burden of proof, not the person who the claims are being made against. Look at the Salem Witch Trials. Almost anyone who was accused of witchcraft was almost always hung regardless of actual proof.
HGMuller wrote:
Plagiarism is not necessarily illegal. You should compare it to participating in a marathon run. They would surely disqualify any athlete when it turned out he did the fiirst 25 miles by cab. That does not mean it is illegal to take a cab. He can continue to do that as long and as often as pleases him. It just means that he cannot call himself a marathon runner.
Breach of copyright is illegal though. You should compare it with selling illegal copies of a modified Microsoft Windows.
I'm pretty sure the name he's not mentioning is chessbase.com
LordNazgul wrote:
kwaloffer wrote:
HGMuller wrote:
Plagiarism is not necessarily illegal. You should compare it to participating in a marathon run. They would surely disqualify any athlete when it turned out he did the fiirst 25 miles by cab. That does not mean it is illegal to take a cab. He can continue to do that as long and as often as pleases him. It just means that he cannot call himself a marathon runner.
Breach of copyright is illegal though. You should compare it with selling illegal copies of a modified Microsoft Windows.
Well, but since the sources he is alleged to have copied were free sources in public domain, how can there be breach of copyright ?
They definitely were not, they were released under the GPL. Which means you are allowed to copy them and change them if you stick to the GPL's terms. If you don't stick to them, it is exactly like copying and changing any other program you don't have a license for.
Jul 1, 2011
0
#14
mattattack99 wrote:
I'm pretty sure the name he's not mentioning is chessbase.com
;-)
Jul 1, 2011
0
#15
Why this hassle, it works is all that matters Funny that someone can just press the ban button to destroy years of work
I have already read about plagiarized Rybka affair. It puzzled me a bit because I was about to buy new chess program to replace four years old Fritz 10. Now I don't know if buying Rybka 4 Aquarium 2011 makes sense at all. I am afraid Rybka career is over so there will be no future development of Convecta software. Also there are now more powerful and free chess engines like Houdini.
However Aquarium package has some advantages over Chessbase products like much cheaper on-line playing service (ChessOK Playing Zone paid 15 bucks a year as opposed to over 40 bucks for similar Playchess.com service) and almost five millions games Huge Database already integrated so I don't have to buy Big or Mega Databases separately from Chessbase.
So what am I to do???
As others have said before, you can claim something, but until it's proven in a court of law, they have the right to keep it on shelves. With that said, the team did submit their findings to the Free Software Foundation, which does pursue legal action against code plagiarism. So depending on what the FSF does will depend on whether or not Rybka sits on shelves.
Also it's kind of funny, Rybka creator Vasik Rajlich said in an interview his sales have doubled within the past week or so because of the publicity, and that he also hasn't even paid much attention to the whole matter itself, so much so that he still thought he was on friendly terms with some of the people accusing him, because he didn't realize the names of everyone making the allegations.
It is really interesting how this affair will end. If FSF jugdes Vas violated GPL, I think Rybka's history will be over. However this does not matter Convecta will be out of business then. Their another products could be sold without Rybka engine flawlessy. So Aquarium, CA, databases and tutorials shipped with another strong chess angines have some future in my view.
However take into account after this ICGA decision the era of chess engines "Clone Wars" has already begun and we don't know whether or not next chess engines will follow Rybka's fate...
If the code is in public domain, then the selling of the product isn't an issue. What happened with Rybbka was about taking away competition titles. There's not been too much coverage about it.
I have seen Vas interview published on YouTube three days ago - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQshTNJ4pSM.
He pointed out that definition of engine's cloning is very tricky and asked why another chess engines were not investigated so closely by IGCA. Vas said Rybka 5 will be probably released in the 2011/2012 time-frame to beat Houdini and other close competitors. Also Rybka Cluster project is hardly developed now. As for future tournaments he wants to take part in freelance events. So I think Vas will continue to exist in computer chess business working together with Convecta and ChessOK companies but staying away from official computer chess tournaments.
I won't mention any specific names, but I would have hoped some popular, prestigious sites would have stopped selling Rybka, given its alleged plagiarism claims. Why (and this is rhetorical) has the Rybka controversy not been mentioned in the ''news'' segment on certain sites who sell Rybka, either? No respect. At least mention it in your daily news--this is huge!