The open source movement says ideas and even expressions should be “free” and freely used, only subject to certain rules contained in form “open source licenses” which, while granting free use, normally still require proper credit being given for any borrowing. Here the legal issue is one of the rules of the International Computer Games Association as to open and closed source use, and cproper redit, but the simple moral issue is whether full credit was given, or, to say it differently, too much credit claimed. The contests confuse these issues, it seems.

The latter issue, moral right, may be answered from three statements in the article: “Rybka’s was a closed-source product, its code unavailable for inspection”; “Rajlich claims to have not kept the early versions of Rybka’s source code in any case”; and “What I can say is that Rybka is original at the level of source code”.

I didn’t say it was pointless inmy revised statement, I said all of that focus on brain power could be used for something better with the results of it (by open source it, etc)  to help other industries.

IMO, Golf is not the best analogy because making a better developed golf club, or how to perfect a golf swing like Tiger Woods isn’t going to make the AI of a manufacturing robot in Detroit any better or help with cracking unsolved algorithmic problems that have the potential to create drug therapies to solve cancer.

But who knows?  Maybe it’s so interconnected now that creating a golf club better will help with streamlined wind tunnel car manufacturing. :)

I don’t think it’s much different than the industries surrounding, e.g., golf though, so I still find criticism of computer chess as pointless to be unwarranted.

This is such an intense hobby it just looks like a whole industry to me, not a gig. There’s so much that can help further tech.

“What’s the point of professional sports?”

Heh, yeah, what is the point of pro sports? But that’s another discussion. :)

I just hope that those algorithms can be used for the greater good for the industry instead of locked up in some code. On the other hand, I understand since a company like Google isn’t going to show their proprietary search engine code for the benefit of mankind. Maybe eventually these chess algorithms will go open source?

I never said credit doesn’t matter, by the way, only that it was a worthless and childish thing to fight over. Especially when it’s ambiguous. I could make analogies to Leibniz and Tesla, since that’s easier to imagine than me inventing a cure for cancer, but it’s not important. Those fights look embarrassing in retrospect, and so will this little chess squabble in time, I am certain. The comparisons to steroids especially struck me as foolish: steroids aren’t allowed in sports because no one in sports is trying to actually *advance* anything, generally-speaking. This, as opposed to individually-speaking, where advancement is simply a honing of the human body in its current evolutionary state. So unless you really think Chess programs have hit their peak; that they truly have nothing left to contribute to human knowledge, then maybe that makes sense to you. But if there’s even a scrap of useful knowledge hiding in there that might help with efficiency or Bayesian analysis, then such “steroids” should be –enforced–, not prohibited.

There is an extremely strong open source engine called Stockfish, the day this engine beats all others, is the day open source is proved to be the best way forward for the human race.

Coders please support the project here.

 http://www.stockfishchess.com

Lots of chess links here.

http://dollyknot.com/chess.html

Regards,

Peter.

http://dollyknot.com/nonlinear/HELLO.html

To suggest WoW is 40% A* pathfinding is pretty wide of the mark – if it were 40% A* then it would be much easier to write a clone of the game. A* might be clever, but it only takes an afternoon to implement it.
Furthermore there are better search algorithms in lots of instances – see for example IDA* (takes a little longer, uses much less memory), the various hierarchical A* adaptations (quicker and more memory efficient on maps – although not necessarily much use outside of that domain / for general purpose problem search), D* (more efficient if replanning due to local changes) – also A* isn’t really much use (if any) for pattern recognition, for that you probably want to be using machine-learning, certainly not search.

Next time perhaps you should stick to using some kind of metaphor involving perhaps a car or something? ;)

Second, even if everybody is supposed to be working together on something (as with research science), attribution of discovery is still a huge issue. If you invent a cure for cancer and everybody else copies it and takes credit for it, are you still going to say that credit doesn’t matter?