Tech Controversy in Chess Engines.

[tardisloopis]

 

 

Summary

Chessbase minimally modifies some open source code and tries to sell it for $$ claiming it is the best, while independent testing shows it actually ranks behind the existing stockfish and did not compare to another chess engine leela zero in their testing. The stock fish license does allow others to sell the code with modifications "as long as they "make sure that (recipients), too, receive or can get the source code" because it is open source. But there is also a claim that the weights for neural nets they released on github are different from the paid version because they rank different (in chess.com article) according to one testing.

 

Quotes

Quote

It is sad to see claims of innovation where there has been none, and claims of improvement in an engine that is weaker than its open-source origins. It is also sad to see people appropriating the open-source work and effort of others and claiming it as their own. 

 

Everyone is permitted and encouraged to modify and improve code from Stockfish/Leela while giving credit; that is the intent of open-source software. Everyone is allowed to copy Stockfish/Leela and sell them, provided the terms of the Stockfish/Leela license are met. But don’t pretend that the product being sold is something it isn’t.

 

My thoughts

Bad advertising and potentially misleading, while maybe violating license for $$?

 

Sources

https://www.chess.com/blog/the_real_greco/fat-fritz-ii-and-stockfish-a-computer-chess-controversy

https://lichess.org/blog/YCvy7xMAACIA8007/fat-fritz-2-is-a-rip-off

 

[Sauron]

I don't think this violates the license, neural network weights are not code. The GPL does force you to publish the entirety of your modifications to the actual code for free though so they had better be doing that, although unfortunately the GPL v3 is a bit more lenient in this regard than v2 was.

 

If it's worse than stockfish use stockfish I guess

[spartaman64]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

I don't think this violates the license, neural network weights are not code. The GPL does force you to publish the entirety of your modifications to the actual code for free though so they had better be doing that, although unfortunately the GPL v3 is a bit more lenient in this regard than v2 was.

 

If it's worse than stockfish use stockfish I guess

stockfish is a traditional chess engine not a neural network 

edit: apparently stockfish does incorporate neural networks into its search tree now i didnt know that

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

stockfish is a traditional chess engine not a neural network 

edit: apparently stockfish does incorporate neural networks into its search tree now i didnt know that

I was just going off what OP wrote, I didn't remember stockfish having a neural net either but it makes sense they would incorporate one eventually