I tend to disagree. Chess games can't be played by humans all the way to the very end using preparation (computer assistance or analysis done by other players). Bear in mind that chess has three phases: opening, middlegame, and endgame. It is true that in opening, you can play it based on preparation or on moves developed by other players. However, if your opponent plays a different move or a move that is a novelty in the opening, then the game will follow a different path. That is the beauty of chess. There's always a new move that can be played in each game. You are only talking about the opening phase of the game. There's more to it than just opening.

If you can find a game of chess played by one player that resulted in a position in the endgame that is exactly the same position played so many years ago, please show them to us. No game is exactly alike to the very end. So to say that they are cheaters, I don't think so.

That's wrong. If the problem is simple enough, two programmers will create the same code. Not the same source code, because they will use different formating and variable names. But the resulting executable will be (consindering they use the same compiler) identical.

Rybka was sold as closed source software with a closed source license. The GPL does prohibit that.

You can sell and distribute, but only if you adhere to the GPL's terms.

i has kno ribka for da libres lololololololol

Difference is Rybka team was claiming other engines as clones justifying it with their commercial status without providing evidence, while in this case evidence is provided for the claims. So i see "witch hunting" only by the Rybka team. Ban is well deserved for this dirty pack.

Shucks! Anyway Rybka is no match to Houdini anyway. But I have Rybka, and still use it with satisfaction.

I know nothing about programming, but it would have been nice to have some of the code of the other programs included in the Rybka vs Fruit Evaluation PDF from above. I wonder how different/similar the other programming is? From my understanding, it isn't a question of other code being used, it is that is wasn't noted. There must be huge similarities in all these programs. How much similarity can there be before you are actually just copying. I think its interesting to think how this would be looked at in other fields . Cars for example: the first one came out, the others just copied it by 4 wheels and a motor.

Don´t understand this. Someone has a good idea, another one makes it better. What´s the problem?

Did Stockfish and Houdini participate in this event?
They area clear better (at least in the TCEC seasons) than Rondo, Thinker and Shredder.

This is plagiarism, man. Meaning, copying the codes of other engines. Just like Luke and Matthew were copied from Mark. Lol

"By a unanimous 5-0 decision of executive members of the ICGA"
Who are those members? I couldn't find any information on the ICGA site. Are they secret? I hope the deciding people are not competitiors of Rybka.

I'm not a programmer myself, so I can't judge about those evidences given in the RTF and PDF documents, but did they check out each Rybka Vasik Rajlich played the engine championships with or did they check it on a reference Rybka? If yes, which please? Are there any researches with other engines?

The entire procress of the ICGA seems rather odd to me. 1st of all, those allegations are public since 2005 or 2006. Why Mr Letouzy and Mr Hyatt (the father of Crafty) did not complain before? To wait 5 or 6 years is not reasonable. The 2nd which makes it odd in my opinion the procedure used by the ICGA itself. To me it seems like far off public and transpararent procedure.

A last and stupid question: when you may call a a thing plagiarized? What are the criterias here?

Very good, everyone using an engine are cheaters and deserve to be disqualified!

If the Rybka=Fruit/Crafty connection is so strong and the evidence so damning, then why did this take over 5 years to unearth? Five and a half years since December 2005! It should be noted , for whatever it's worth , that a huge majority of the panel members who investigated and condemned Rajlich are his direct competitors, ie, authors of rival programs. These same competitors wonder why Rajlich did not give up the Rybka source code for their perusal.

As a layperson in computer matters (I am an attorney), I don't get this at all. There is no Rybka source code to compare, so apparently various circumstantial evidence is cited. Fruit was the strongest engine. Then Rybka was the strongest engine. And yet their evaluation functions were found to overlap by 64%. Call the police! The panel points out that weaker engines had less overlap as compared to the 2 strongest engines (Fruit and Rybka). Naturally, engines that are closer to the "chess truth" will overlap more. I don't see how an evaluation overlap of 64% is "nearly identical". Geneticists claim that human beings share 96% of the same DNA (aka "source code") with chimpanzees. Perhaps the ICGA will ban God from claiming that Human Beings are uniquely in His image since the ALmighty seems to have plagiarized the source code for chimpanzees when coding humans..

What do you mean, he gave credit? The quote right there from him asserts his claim that he did not use any code from other engines. That is the opposite of giving credit.

I feel bad for Topalov's team. Even the software they used involved cheating ..

, and now Danailov will accuse Rajlich of Cheating too ?... LOL
( sorry could not resist )

Also, 2012 BMW is a clone of 1925 Ford !!

There are rumours stating that Houdini iz a also a clone.

@freakclub Matthew and Luke and Mark were each direct and at times indirect witnesses to the event of Jesus' life on Earth, however qualified to relate what was common knowledge or accurately relayed to them about Jesus, much more so in Marks case. The CANDOR of these three Gospels accountings are proof that they are individual works. In addition we see that "...all scripture is inspired of God". These books, under the microscope, suffer no such accusation.

Oh Rybka Rybka Rybka!!! Yes, all would be well if the help from other engines was admitted at the start.

How original and magnificent was/is Fruit now? Well for now it stands as very original and very magnificent and very innovative.

Levy and his cronies should be ashamed of themselves. They tried and convicted Raj with trumpted up "evidence" without even giving him a chance to defend himself. Who do these guys think they are, Soviet Communists?! Perhaps it's time to expose the ICGA!

@noyb

Can't you read an article? Rajlich was given numerous occasions to defend himself, and he constantly ignored them. Which in itself is a confession.

I wonder if i now can give back my Rybka World Computer Chess Champion products to chessbase ?

So, has Rybka become the Topalov/Danailov of the computers?
Toiletgate II The revenge of the machines!

"Rybka investigation report" link does not work.

It sure took a lot longer than it should have. I and many others (Anthony Cozzie, Dr. Hyatt) provided a lot of evidence when Rybka (1.0) beta hit the scene back in 2004.

Here's a short synopsis copied from CCC archives:

http://www.open-chess.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1004

Finally, partial justice has been served. I'm glad Fabien finally became involved as that was the missing ingredient.

Ciao!

-elc.

The problem with the judging panel is that they are all programmers who are jealous about Rybka.

Probably half the computers which competed in these World Championships had, in some way, older counterparts' code. It's difficult to imagine every single one of these programmers creating a whole distinct code from scratch, "inventing the wheel" multiple times, all in their own way...

As quoted in my article on the Firebird-Rybka controversy from some time ago, Rajlich has commented on the influences of Rybka in the past, albeit rather evasively:

Hernandez: What chess engines in public domain, when you got started, had the biggest influence on the earliest versions of Rybka?

Rajlich: Well, actually I started in a kind of strange way. I printed out just about every single paper there was to print out about computer chess; all these academic papers. A lot of them are interesting, a lot of them are just really relevant, actually. (…) So I kind of started to work through that, that was how I started. Probably it’s not the most efficient way to do it. Probably the most efficient way is to take an open source program – at that point it would have been Crafty – and just kind of go through that. And I gradually worked around through that. (…)

Those guys will be destroyed by Ribka team's advocates in normal court...

lets see if Rajlich is as slippery as Rybka in court>

Forget about Rybka.We already have Houdini and now have the new Critter 1.2 which is crushing Rybka 4.
This business is over.

Thats funny: meta-cheating, some GMs cheats using a cheater engine.
BTW, from the beginning I hate Rybka and I do not know why.

I interviewed Vasik Rajlich on ICC and I like him a lot. However he got started he obviously put an enormous amount of work into improving Rybka. So did IM Lawrence Kaufman.

And why were Crafty and Fruit not world champions?

A commercial Houdini has all the same problems as Rybka. It's a derivative of Robbolito/Ivanhoe/IPPOLIT, with some additional (very good) work done to improve playing strength. However, it's plagiarized (output (eval and pv) of early versions of Houdini corresponds 100% to Robbolito output in many positions). Robbo/Ivan/IPPO are unlicensed open-source, so the code is fair game, but it's not cool to take someone else's code and call it your own.

Not only that, the origins of Robbolito/Ivanhoe/IPPOLIT are still unclear, with a fair amount of circumstantial evidence pointing to an origin based on reverse-engineered code, probably from Rybka 3. Illegal? Likely not, but again, ethically dubious.

Houdini competing at WCCC is most likely out of the question for these reasons. Houdini being sold? It's a risk that Robert Houdart would be taking -- if Vasik Rajlich decided to pursue a copyright case against Houdini and could prove the links mentioned about (in particular the Rybka-IPPOLIT link, which would be difficult). And it's most certainly a risk for larger companies (ChessOK or ChessBase) who would consider distributing it.

Then again, most people don't care about this stuff and are just happy to pay whoever for whatever, as long as it's the strongest. Sure, Houdini is a strong and useful engine, and Robert Houdart deserves some credit for improving the code he started with. But it's unfair to the people who developed that code (be it the IPPOLIT developers, or Vasik Rajlich, if the RE claims are true (unclear)) to claim it as his own -- he added icing to someone else's cake and wants to be known as a master baker, to quote another post in this thread.

Anyhow, ICGA should be lauded for taking the high road with these issues.

This verdict would not stand in a proper court I think. If it would then Rybka already would have been sued for compensation, cause they used open source codes for commercial use.

Another thing I don't understand is why the Rybka programmer had to give evidence to defend himself? Doesn't that go in against the principle: innocent untill proven guilty?

The solution for this mess is to contribute to increase the support to free software chess engines like GNUChess, Crafty and so on. Linux can beat MS, so Free chess can beat closed engines also, because millions of brains will produce better code than a few.

Regarding the ChessVibes text: "Not long after, on March 1st, we received an open letter about the Rybka-Fruit case signed by fourteen chess programmers. They all supported the claim that Rybka was cloned from Fabien Letouzey’s Fruit."

First, it ended up being 16 programmers who agreed to be signatories. But more importantly, I think it is a bit misleading to say that they all *necessarily* supported the claim that Rybka was cloned from Fruit. Rather they all (at the very least) considered the evidence to be sufficiently robust (and of high enough importance) that the ICGA should commence a full and proper review of it (allowing, of course, Rajlich the ability to respond to the allegations). Some of these programmers later participated in the evidence gathering/debating phases carried out by the Panel, while others simply chose to allow the ICGA to handle the matter.

I think now would be a great time to commercialize Houdini. It is clearly the strongest programm ever. Have it participate (and probably win) the next CCWC, build in a database and a cool opening book and every serious player would HAVE to buy it. I know I would.

@Bert, I don't necessarily agree you on all points, but i appreciate your thoughtful answer. My first issue is with the phrase "nearly identical" which the panel apparently intends to mean "derivative".

Second, as a legal concept I am curious about the scope of so-called "copyright" protection for what amounts to a function-oriented process. Yeah, patents are harder to get, for good reason! We don't want folks "patenting" useful processes (eg, "chess evaluation function") unless the patent application is sufficiently detailed to enforce any infringements. And that seems a huge problem here: as I understand it, the GPL is not regulated-- you just stick the GPL logo bitmap in your FTP/website folder and boom, you claim copyright protection under GPL. Except perhaps such content is not even copyrightable. In that case the GPL would be enforceable only by the "honor system". :) Again you are correct that this is all very technical-- and not my field of practice in any event (certainly not European law at that!). In any event, I would prefer if the ICGA panel had engaged an intellectual property lawyer to sort out such issues. As presented, the reports strike me as conclusory and rushed which is rather unbelievable considering that the events in question are from 2005-2006.

Thanks for your useful comment, Bert.

wow...

what a shame to his name...

Oh and also Rajlich never stated that he used a binary system. He should have stated that his system was based on a binary system and thanked Gottfried Leibniz.

Nowadays, you don't code from scratch, you google, you import code you use pre-existing routines. Noone starts with a blank page. Maybe Rajlich made a mistake and was inspired with the source code of other programs, but nowadays any programmer does it and you cannot say whether he was inspired and thought his own ideas were more important than what he replicated. Let Rajlich reply.

Who are the members of the panel? I could not find it.

on a side note: i do not care.

My impression:
1. jealous, i think this was jealous from other programmer;
2. illegal, a lot of judges were plaintiffs
3. the evidents not enough

Just a question to the ones who write about "witch hunt" and "jealousy", no matter what your general opinion about "cloning" might be:

Wasn't it the Rybka-team which spammed the whole Internet publically accusing other engines of having cloned Rybka and talking about ethics?

The irony. What comes around goes around...

I don't know if the accusations are true (just like I never knew if the accusations against other engines were true), but I do know Rybka launched the same "witch hunt" on other engines.
What could be fair enough if they had evidence (which they never presented), I am just saying that the Rybka-team acted in the same way as what is happening here and accused others of cloning, were you there to blame them of "jealousy" and "witch hunt" as well? So let's keep the discussion fair and not have double standards.

...but well, as much as the question of ownership and cloning is interesting, as much it's also a market with money and egos involved...same old story I guess.

4. all the words used here were used by somebody else, so you can say I plagiarized

I would suggest to the Rybka team to open the code as a Free Software Chess project, under the protection of a social contract.

I would like have liked the evidence to include some description of how other programs do it, i.e. that the supposed commonalities between the evaluation functions of Rybka and Fruit are not also common to all chess programs. (I've looked at a couple of the docs, and did not see any such mention.)

Without such a description, the charges are like accusations that some GM cheated in a game because "his moves match Rybka's moves 90% of the time." Well, maybe those were clearly the best/only moves!

Finally justice is served...

I'm glad that I'm only using Fritz, Junior, and Fruit engines.

I don't think this is over.
1- I'm pretty sure the Rybka team is looking into ways to overturn this. Otherwise, this is the end of their business.
2- This looks like enough reason to start a GPL violation investigation since there is strong evidence of "derived" work and distribution in the GPL sense. Even if the original author(s) don't care, the FSF and gpl-violations.org try to enforce GPL compliance and the GPL seems solid so far. I'm not sure if there are less radical ways of compliance than a solution that leads to the availability of Rybka's sources since last time I checked some of the derived parts were all over and essential, certainly not something to easily factor out into a separate program.

Another question:
The cloning-dicussion has been around for a long time now and even among computer-experts there seems to be very differing opinions (not only "morally", but also purely "technically").
Is there any precedent court decision about copyright concerning programming codes, the evidences that need to be presented, the limits of it etc.?
If not, then if this goes to court it will create an important precedent for the future that will influence computer chess and chess programs a lot, no?

What kind of commercial impact will this have on Rybka? Are any of the other programs patented? Will we see a slew of infringement suites against Rybka?

your comment shows a lack of sense of humor, but that's another story, too. :D

I read the reports.
I am sure that this is a jealous case.
Your programs couldn't beat Rybka, So you guys beats Rajlich. Funny!
All the judges from competiters, from interests related, from plaintiffs, how could the investigation keeps fair!!!!?????
if it was illeagal, it is easy to decide; you don't need to invite the competiters to decide. you should invite some common programmers to decide.
I am an amatuer, I know the name of Rybka, but I never used it. Because it costs money. I only use the free engine.
in our daily life, (1+1)+(1+1)=2+2=4, this is right way. professors and primary school students do it same.

There is no copying. Whats the point? These amazing, wonderful and fear inspiring and hated events were know by all of Jerusalem if not all of Isreal and further. It is not copying, it's unavoidable similarity. We have several viewpoints from men moved to write by God Himself to place side by side to make it easier for many different types of persons to understand God. What is more - Their similarities PLUS their differences are a mark of the truth to what is recorded.

I am afraid Vasik Rajlich's next chess engine will be called Skynet and together with its friends Houdini, Rybka, Stockfish, and Critter will take over the world. Get your ass to mars! :)

Shocking and sad news, reminds me of copying other students computer programs at school and changing variables names and the formatting of the code to look a little different not a good thing to do, very sorry to hear this as I have been a big Rybka supporter, even called my fish Rybka!

Can Houdini compete in ICGA tournaments? There will be no competition for Robert for a while!

Wouldn't it be fair to let Vasik face the accusation and state his point of view before judgement?

How Jealous, jealous, jealous, jealous, jealous, jealous.......
In Chess, there is a tactics named deflection. You guys have no chance to use on the board, you used it here for taking the titles.
Now, Crafty is the No. 1 in the world; Fruits is the No. 1 in the world, Keep going to see who dare to beat me
Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame

I support Rybka......from today.

everybody who doubts the verdict should take a look at the evidence. I'm a computer science student and from what I understand, the evidence is really overwhelming and I guess Fruit's developers can go to the court with it, since he violated GNU GPL's terms.

It is time:

Behind the reverse enginering of Rybka 3:

Head Comrade Yakov is Christophe Theron
Roberto Pescatore is Anthony Cozzie

Fellow decembrists now will speak out!

An interesting scenario is one in which essentially both Rajlich and ICGA are correct. If Rajlich implemented the primary logic of his program using machine learning techniques and trained it on the then-leading OSS chess programs then we would see exactly what ICGA found.

The question of whether that kind of "copying", in which the algorithm of another program is automatically reverse-engineered from its behavior, amounts to a violation of the ICGA rules is not entirely obvious. I would say though that it certainly seems to meet the "derived from" criterion because without the other program(s) then the "learning" algorithm will not function.

It is unlikely to violate US copyright unless the OSS licenses of Crafty and/or Fruit prohibit such usage - which AFAIK the GPL does not - (but IANAL). I have proposed the GGPL (Greater GPL) as a license to deal with exactly these sorts of issues for all types of metaprogramming programs.

http://www.pagesmiths.com/blog/C1602834558/E1763876253/index.html

Almost all strong chess engines seem to be partial clones of each other these days. One would not be surprised if the "cloning" tree extends all the way back to a much earlier engine, with each author borrowing from each other. To be honest, I'm not really surprised with Rybka. The fact it's being sold as a commercial engine is disturbing, but the fact that it's a clone doesn't really bother me.

Vasik Rajlich is not a Serb and have no connection with Serbia. He has dual Czechoslovakian-American citizenship, and his wife is from Poland (where they live together).
This is 21st century. It is quite easy to google these things out.

There are rumours that I myself am a clone. Or was it clown? Anyway, they say I plagiarize red noses, to which I reply other people with red noses just drink as much as I do: we come up with the same solution after intense calculations of misery and joy. Only 36 percent of our drinks differ.

I would not call it plagiarism, I would call it a Ryb-off.

I don't want to hastily play armchair software copyright infringement juror, in this case. But, it's so intriguing.

Computer chess is suddenly extremely interesting, yet, even if this decision is entirely just, I can't help but wonder if it inherently devalues the title (CC champion)?

Presuming no future civil action is successful against Rybka, this coveted title would have been worn by a demonstrably inferior program (according to the CCC's own standards of measure, at the time), because -- what?! -- a Mr.Vasik Rajlich's bibliography was found wanting.

It's difficult to sell intellectual dishonesty to a public bent upon having the very best program (to enable their brilliant, uncredited kibitz work).

And, the sale is only more difficult, with people here suggesting Mr.Vasik Rajlich would be entitled to retain his titles, if only he'd disclosed that Rybka was 64% control-v -- with everything (from Claude Shannon, to Cray Blitz, to Crafty) all rolled up into an unscrupulous payday for wireless toilet riders.
[note to self: seek a copyright on slogan: "the right tool for anyone >96% primate."]

Might as well ban any chess program which fails to provide source code -- either openly, or perhaps to some special committee (a few members willing to sign NDAs, and act as judges)... The only trouble is, it then becomes the "Open Source Computer Chess Championship," and who needs this distinction?

This post i just found is a nice try to summarise things.

http://www.chess.com/news/rybka-banned-and-stripped-of-titles-3798

'I see a lot of assumptions and questions below about aspects of this case, so let me (as someone whose profession is in the software domain) attempt to offer some clarity from a code licensing perspective:

- Each piece of software is distributed under a certain license (of which there are many types) that the creator of the software decides on. The particular chosen license sets forth the rules of how the code and software may and may not be used, e.g., whether the code of the software is allowed to be reused/copied, and whether to do so requires attribution or payment. For software as an intellectual property, to not comply with the terms of a license is equivalent to stealing (from a legal perspective). So copying without attribution, in this case, makes the author liable for theft, at the least.

- That Rybka is superior in strength to the engines it has allegedly copied from is not surprising: it shows that more than copying has taken place, e.g., the application of some genuine creativity on the part of the creators of Rybka. That, however, does not mean that the copying is less of a violation, so the argument that it's better and therefore not exactly the same is moot; noone claimed that it's exactly the same, merely that portions of it are too much alike to be the result of mere independent creation coinciding by chance.

- The evaluation function is one of the most critical and distinguishing pieces of a chess engine; it's also the part that must be guarded the most if the author wishes to not be easily outdone. This is what makes some engines stronger than others. So copying the evaluation function is the same as grabbing the parts of highest value (without "paying" for them). As an analogy, if you visit a wine cellar and take away a $5 bottle without paying, the owner may choose to avoid the hassle of going after you, but if you took a vintage $5000 bottle away, they may be inclined differently.

- Whether we like or agree with the presence of licenses, especially restrictive licenses (like GPL, for those who know about it), is another point that has no relevance to the discussion. It's the author's choice what license to use, and it's their legal right to have their intellectual property protected from misuse under the terms of the chosen license. And yes, some licenses are generally preferable from the perspective of someone wishing to reuse code without too many strings attached (e.g., GPL isn't one of them).'

Nothing about this over at Chessbase yet. Wonder why.

What the hell has happened?

I remember how Rybka team attacked other engines such as fire, ippolito, houdini etc for "pirating" their code.

But when somebody accused their own program for same reason, they decided not to defend themselves at all?

If that's really the case, I want the Rybka team to leave computer chess community forever, not just the computer world championship.

I think all of chess players are cheaters when says "My 60 memorable games", my 100 best games and etc. All chess champions, GM, IM and etc are cheaters when says - my game. Actually theirs games based on the idea of Ruy Lopez, Petroff, Chigorin, Alapin and others who created, wrote and developed openings.

Computer chess, who cares?

Anyway, Chess960 is the way to cure this disease engines have infected classical chess with. Let's get back to thinking over-the-board and have the best player win.

To me this is clear : During 4 years Rybka smashed all the programs out there. The other authors were JEALOUS of him. Fruit and Crafty are clearly insignificant compared to Rybka. If I write a piece of code , a "for loop" they will claim it'theirs. Those guys are loosers who can't stant comptetition.
If you can't beat his engine, take down the man. I will keep buying Rybka and ignore the other loosers.

Please don't speak about programming since you don't know much about it. I am Software Engineer. Most Code is MOSTLY unoriginal and copied. Nobody wastes time reinventing the wheel. Also, search algorithms, tree lookups, comparisons are all similar code. This is the core of a chess program. These are solved problems. I've also viewed the evidence and as a Software Engineer is it NOWHERE conclusive. I can find similarities in similar programs at will. That doesn't prove plagiarism. I can take two Excel like programs and show that they do many things the same.

The problem like all things in chess are these petty, petty pathetic games played by chess institutions whether the FIDE, US Chess Federation, or Magnus/Kasparov revolting. They think that these institutions exist to serve themselves. NO! They exist to serve us the Chess playing public.

If I was ICGA I would be ready for a Libel lawsuit.

Well , just remember how strongly they supported Kramnik with paper and computers for his bathroom during the Elista match...

Hi Joe!

You create something and I will check it thoroughly and then improve it and call it my creation and prove it by saying that it is better than yours! :)

what do you say then?

Chessbase has a problem as retail seller of Rybka. It is possible that the developers of Crafty and Fruit are going to ask compensation, now that Rybka has made good sales without proper acknowledging the contribution to its product by its rivals. Had Rybka for instance abided by the GPL license Fruit was under, then its source code would also have been open to competitors, and Rybka would never have dominated the market in the years 2007-2010 as it has done.

The ICGA have created a page on Wikispaces https://icga.wikispaces.com/message/list/Preventing+cheating

Here anyone can post ideas and proposed rule changes by clicking on the Discussion tab. You must 1st be a member of Wikispaces this takes about 11 seconds.

Only posts on this Wiki will be considered by the ICGA board.'

So what happens to all of the good work gone into later Rybkas,

it just gets flushed down the toilet? That's ridiculous.

Why wouldn't they encourage him to open source? Something.

It's obvious they don't really care about advancing computer chess,

it's all about money and egos.

And then Houdini takes things from Rybka. It's absurd, the whole thing.

I cant see any article on chessbase about this , why is that?

It would have only taken the polite courtesy of naming the code authors? Just goes to illustrate how a lack of integrity catches up with people. The plagerizer pretending to create Rybka solely by himself, must feel like an idiot!

Allthough I agree with Eiae that it's "just computer chess", it is slightly interesting. It seems to me that its all mostly build on circumstantial evidence. However overwhelming that may be, I'm by no means a legal expert or a computer-chess expert, but I'm having my doubts if that would hold in court. Is reverse-engineering accepted as evidence in court, for example?
Also, allthough it's highly suspicious that Rajlich doesnt defend himself, the burden of proof is on the claimant. Innocent until proven guilty, is one of the most important legal principles.

Allthough I agree with Eiae that it's "just computer chess", it is slightly interesting. It seems to me that its all mostly build on circumstantial evidence. However overwhelming that may be, I'm by no means a legal expert or a computer-chess expert, but I'm having my doubts if that would hold in court. Is reverse-engineering accepted as evidence in court, for example?
Also, allthough it's highly suspicious that Rajlich doesnt defend himself, the burden of proof is on the claimant. Innocent until proven guilty, is one of the most important legal principles.

Lastly, Ive wondered if all would be well if Rajlich would just admit he copied parts of Fruit/Crafty and gave them credits according to GPL. Okay, Letouzey might want to see money, but I figure he could easily settle that for a small percentage and have his conscience cleared....

I dont think it has been made sufficiently clear that the GPL is Viral (with all the advantages / and disadvantages that brings, i wont go into the merits here).

To admit that the source code contains portions of GPL code renders all the code GPLed, even your own creation. That, more than anything, might have been the reason for the initial and current reluctance to be more forthcoming?.

Ed, there's always the option to pay for the use of the code. At least, I assume the original authors can sell their code to any license they wish. As I said, in this case that would come to a percentage of turnover/profit on the Rybka sales. But given the strength difference between the engines that shouldn't need to be a killer percentage.

Well, these news are quite shocking.

I checked the Chessbase website for a German report on these events, then I checked the English site and then the Spanish one.

The result was always the same: nothing. BACK IN THE USSR, or what? :)

is now rybka 4.1 multicore 64 bit freeware? i want download it for free?!

I think it has become lost a bit that this has very little to do with the GPL license on the Fruit source code. The ICGA have decided that Rybka violated some of their regulations and so have asked for the return of prizes won as a result, and have banned Vasik Rajlich from competing in their competitions. Vasik Rajlich could have avoided this by correctly attributing all his sources when entering these competitions. It is my understanding that the regulation means you must attribute where you are copying source code, not the use of similar algorithms.

The ICGA has taken considerable trouble to find as much evidence as possible that Rybka incorporates the source code of other engines in it's make up. It did this before drawing conclusions and has also given Vasik Rajlich a chance to respond to the evidence given, or to defend himself by proving his innocence independently.

There is no problem with the GPL unless the FSF decides to prosecute in which case they would then need to prove the case themselves. There would probably be a different standard of proof in such a case anyway.

As any computer programmer can tell you a programs source code is rather like a novel in the following sense. Two people can independently write two books about the same subject and they might even have similar arguments to make. This does not imply that one book is copied from the other. In the same way two programmers might implement the same algorithm, but the source code written will be substantially different, as will the compiled version of this source code. It is virtually impossible for two programmers to write the same source code without copying.

What if we'd forget about plagiarism and call it sampling of source code? A postmodern view on writing could do the trick.

Let everybody 'steal' from each other with impunity, then let them compete with each other. What's wrong with this? - a no-holds-barred wrestling fight.

I hope the ICGA is ready for a lawsuit. Libel is serious. If you read the reports they are very amateurish. They do not conclusively prove that he plagiarized anything. In fact, their own evidence by being circumstantial implies and admits that it is not an established fact, irrespective of the Institution "proclaiming" it so. If they had only said that they believe that it was plagiarism then it would have been an opinion. But they state it as a fact. Oh Noes!!

I think that the ICGA forgot that Rybka is a commercial product and so Vas's loss in reputation will result in massive damages. Can't wait to see how this will turn out.
How many millions Vas will win that is.

And for those of you who think the ICGA is correct, well, the best proof that Rybka is genuine is that it can BEST both Fruit and Crafty. It is substantially better. This is evidence that it is substantially different and is powerful evidence for a court.

I´m surprised that chessbase haven´t taken a more proactive role on this .

They are still selling the product with indirect reference to ICGA-titles:

"For years Rybka has been the uncontested number one in computer chess and since its great breakthrough in 2006 the program has won with remarkable regularity one world title after the other."

- I must say I find all of this quite detrimental to the chessbase brand.

Chessbase sucks!! Look at them. holding the information and only publishing what is in their own interest. They belong to another era, where information was totally controlled, more close to USSR or Nazi Germany. This is even more ridiculous in the internet era, where anyone can find the missing information in other sources, like chessvibes.

and fruit is free

Funny how Chessbase has not cover the story at all.

The ICGA can prove that code from crafty or Fruit ( I forget which) exists in Rybka 1.0 and through to Rybka 2.3.2a. They would have to be really stupid to accuse someone without being able to prove it and also be advised that legally if sued they would win. Some months ago V Rajlich began talking about renting out powerful Clusters for rybka which would stop any more re-engineering of the Rybka code and i think from what i read its a success. So i don,t think after whats happened now he will create a Rybka 5.and i'm pretty sure he won.t be bothered either. We will continue to receive Houdini updates for free. So Rybka was good while it lasted but i think this is the end of the road for Rybka.

From another perspective, whilst Rybka may have been the strongest PC chess program, is it actually worth very much? Serious chess that requires heavy lifting like Rybka programs is a minority pursuit, and it is copiously pirated anyway. Is there enough money to sue for? And who of the open source community could put the money together to sue them? I agree it would be a good demonstration of the strength of the GPU licence in court, but I have the feeling this instead will fizzle out with Chessbase making a small payout.

Gimme me the code and I will create Rybka360. ;-)

It's the end for Rybka.....When I heard people talking about Rybka 5.......It's it a joke???????

And people pay for a non recognize software.....ahahahahahahahahahahahaha

New interview with Vasik Rajlich:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQshTNJ4pSM

regards, Paul

The fact is that me as a customer is disappointed, since i was a Rybka 1 series customer especially.

This is a shocker actually !!! he was hiding this all these years omg

Rybka's a fine chess engine. It has managed to meet all of the qualifying standards of many testers. Suddenly, it's a clone.

when i first time heard about Rybka, i was comfused whether i would work or not but now i think that you are right.

for more information: http://www.computercollisioninvestigations.com

Wow! Two programs with exactly the same specs using the same programing language have similar code! That never happens!

Obvioulsy, either the folks doing the investigation don't understand anything about programming and compilers, or they have a motive to take adverse action against a better programmer. I'm guessing the latter since they were able to dissassemble the code.

What's the easiest way to beat the top guy? Have him labeled a cheat and removed from competition. If it's the same code, and you only need to give credit, how come the rest of the programmers didn't use the same code and have as good a program? Oh yeah, because it's not the same code and Vas is a much better programmer.

What a shameful attack...

remove Rybka is unfair, but use the codes of fruit and crafty, there is a difference between the performance of Rybka and his predecessors. Remove titles Rybka, but rather responds to interest from other participants that l title. What is that Rybka just stay with your crown and share the credit and he gave with the other programmers Fruit and crafty.

I think the biggest problem in the Fish that she used the original model which says that any move in chess, there is only one right decision and no matter how much you do not try to do differently in a perfect game will always be one solution it follows that in the foreseeable future, the overlap all programs will be above 70%

And yet people who took out the decision in terms of ordinary mathematics idiots. The best idea is not to Fish estimates the position itself but the ability to cut off the options that have no counter-play (the same as it was unable to Fruit of the proper degree) The fish was so long the world's first only because all the other programs could not play any arbitrary position with many figures in the middle of the party. Rajlich made perhaps the simplest and yet most brilliant thing he did not fooling myself with writing positional tables calculate the strong and weak fields, and positional advantage here because the evaluation of Fish and coincides with Fruit (yes this is a table of these programs are almost identical to what I 99% sure but they are also identical in any book on chess theory) So, let's find the first printed book on chess theory and has sued for plagiarism and other authors Fruit chess programs (left to find the heirs of the author of this book and in the bag)

Wow its amazing the comments here to me from almost all who have clearly not read the evidence and reports all which can be downloaded and viewed here:

http://ilk.uvt.nl/icga/investigation/Rybka_disqualified_and_banned_by_IC...

It took me a couple of hours to read all get the full set of facts but even if you read the summary in the Rybka_Investigation_report.pdf you will VAST AMOUNTS of clear evidence of stolen code and if it matters to anyone I am have been a programmer for almost 20 years.

But if you are still inclined not to get the facts and make judgement quickly heres a couple key points IMHO:

The pre-releases of Rybka contained large amounts of identical obsolete code that was in Crafty. Obsolete/Dead code is in fact that, its a bunch of code that was written, never used but somehow was not removed.

The early Rybka versions have a sequential, numerical and in many cases verbatim comments to that of Fruit 2.1.

The chances of someone leaving the same dead code or writing a comment like:

//this line is a hack, its crappy but so is UCI

where to code and algorithms match others code is not remote is impossible.

And FYI, the way this was obtained was by using something called a dissambler/de-compiler which are programs that essentially take programs that computers run which are zeros and ones/binary and generate source..again the chances of even getting the same output from ones of these is remote.

As a programmer, this was not shameless it was a crime.

And the remains of dead code is a surplus just a macro and not plagiarized as you think (

One cannot argue with Rybka's results.
Rybka won several years in a row.
There are claims that Rybka is substantially the same as Crafty and Fruit.
If this were true I would expect Fruit and Crafty to place relatively close to the first place finisher - Rybka.

So people are claiming that these programs are substantially the same and the results are very different.

I think a more independent review should be conducted.

Grats Rybka on your results.
These allegations should not tarnish your results.
This isnt an issue of doping.
The code was written, the computer followed it, and it beat other computers that also were following code.

If I write a windows program do I need to write a menu bar from scratch or do I use a menu bar control that others wrote and if I do - does it take away from whatever I achieve with the program.

Chess programs share pieces like menu bars.

We are here because we have a love for the game.
Lets not take away from the accomplishments of Rybka.
Not unless all programs are going to be subject to the same review.

hug your code and sleep

Rybka is the Danailov of chess engines!

This is Chessbase's stance:

http://chessbase.com/news/2011/riis01.pdf

An excellent, illuminating paper written recently by Dr. Riis.

The same report appeared on their news feed in four parts:
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7791
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7807
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7811
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7813