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Our lawsuit against ChessBase

stockfishchess.org

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Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#191

Post by cormacrelf »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #187

> leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. Does this wording seem extremely weird to anyone else? According to the GPL: > You may not propagate or modify a covered work except > as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt > otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will > AUTOMATICALLY TERMINATE your rights under this License Capitalization added b…

There is little practical difference between asking a court to enforce an automatic termination clause and asking a court to enforce the exercise of an option to terminate. One will require showing the automatic termination clause is triggered, the other will require showing the right to terminate arose. In either case they’re trying to get ChessBase to cease any use of the software, and they want a court to order them to stop because the consequences of violating a court order are substantial.

In a technical sense yes, the GPL avoided giving rights holders an option to terminate. There’s no such thing as automatic enforcement of these things though (well, not for GPL, music industry is a different story), so it is not a big difference. I’m pretty sure you could just send a violator a fresh copy of the code and establish a new license agreement with them, so it’s still up to the rights holder if they want to continue.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#192

Post by gmiller123456 »

I see lots of claims that there are no damages since Stockfish is free. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that argument is the end of the story. Google Vs Oracle was over code that was public and given away for free, and Oracle was asking for $8.8 Billion US. They didn't get anything on account of copyright not applying in the case, but there's no doubt some very significant money would have changed hands if it went the other way.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#193

Post by brians »

krick wrote: post #174
sillysaurusx wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it will be so easily won: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900683 Note that it’s legal to sell stockfish as long as you’re compliant with GPLv3. ChessBase seems to be compliant. Stockfish argues that ChessBase isn’t compliant because they refuse to release the weights. But this makes no sense; the weights are distributed with every copy of Fat Fritz 2. (Otherwise, how would the program run? It’s n…

I have no clue about all these copyright litigations and most make no sense to me anyway, but when you put it that way, yeah, that sounds like a weak claim. Again, no idea if a court would see it that way, but if you take it a step further you can almost claim that software is not GPL-3 compliant, because it's being developed using non open-source IDE. Oh, we cannot prove it? But then, we also cannot prove these NN w…

That’s actually been an issue for some non-GPL Smalltalk systems. What does it mean to distribute the “preferred form for modification” when that’s an image file for a closed-source interpreter? Same deal with GPL’d Mathematica code.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#194

Post by Lordarminius »

> Thus, to enforce the consequences of the license termination, we have filed a lawsuit... We believe we have the evidence, the financial means and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end.

The part about financial means stood out for me. All societies should work harder to ensure that money is not an impediment to obtaining justice.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#195

Post by encryptluks2 »

Lordarminius wrote: post #194

> Thus, to enforce the consequences of the license termination, we have filed a lawsuit... We believe we have the evidence, the financial means and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end. The part about financial means stood out for me. All societies should work harder to ensure that money is not an impediment to obtaining justice.

I filed a lawsuit against someone who is using the money they stole frome to defend themselves. Basically if I win the money I get will be essentially gone and the Defendant will not have the means to pay anything back.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#196

Post by Oreb »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #169
qwertox wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be easily won against ChessBase. They F'd up. German court does care way too much for the "Urheberrecht" -- copyright -- and this is clearly a violation of it. If they would let this go through, nobody would take the German court serious again, and there is too much interest in not letting that happen. In any case, they also sell a music software called "Ludwig 3" [1]. I now wouldn't be surprised if it also…

I don’t think it will be so easily won: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900683 Note that it’s legal to sell stockfish as long as you’re compliant with GPLv3. ChessBase seems to be compliant. Stockfish argues that ChessBase isn’t compliant because they refuse to release the weights. But this makes no sense; the weights are distributed with every copy of Fat Fritz 2. (Otherwise, how would the program run? It’s n…

> Stockfish argues that ChessBase isn’t compliant because they refuse to release the weights.

No. The first license violation was that ChessBase released FF2 without source code for their modified Stockfish, and without the GPL license. This was later fixed after we reported it. The second license violation was Houdini, which contains Stockfish code, and even today is not a available under the GPL.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#199

Post by daxcurzon »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #195
Lordarminius wrote: post #194

> Thus, to enforce the consequences of the license termination, we have filed a lawsuit... We believe we have the evidence, the financial means and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end. The part about financial means stood out for me. All societies should work harder to ensure that money is not an impediment to obtaining justice.

I filed a lawsuit against someone who is using the money they stole frome to defend themselves. Basically if I win the money I get will be essentially gone and the Defendant will not have the means to pay anything back.

This is how it works in Czech Republic.

Two brothers defrauded the government by forging signatures of the owners and notaries for the transfer of property deeds and took several hundred thousand Euros worth of land from various people.

My friend's family has been in court for 10 years trying to get it back.

The brothers mortgaged the properties to pay for litigation.

The real shit sandwich is that one brother died, and if the other brother dies, they start the proceedings all over again. If they win, it's purely in the name of justice; the lawyer will keep most of the money as payment for 10 years of litigation.

Lose-lose.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#200

Post by saurik »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #195
Lordarminius wrote: post #194

> Thus, to enforce the consequences of the license termination, we have filed a lawsuit... We believe we have the evidence, the financial means and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end. The part about financial means stood out for me. All societies should work harder to ensure that money is not an impediment to obtaining justice.

I filed a lawsuit against someone who is using the money they stole frome to defend themselves. Basically if I win the money I get will be essentially gone and the Defendant will not have the means to pay anything back.

I feel like you are supposed to be able to get an injunction against this, but in practice it is probably stupid hard :(.
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