Our lawsuit against ChessBase • Hacker News Board

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#241

Post by MikeDelta » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

MikeDelta wrote: post #135

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…

Sounds like a business model.

Not my business model guys, but a business model used by parties out there that decide to misuse open source licenses and charge for basically a layer on top of the open source.

If this company has two products that under the hood seem to rely heavily on open source but they don't mention it, then it sounds this is their business model.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#242

Post by codehotter » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

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…

> Note that it’s legal to sell stockfish as long as you’re compliant with GPLv3. ChessBase seems to be compliant.

Unless your license has been terminated by the copyright holders, in which case you cannot be compliant with the license because don't have a license to distribute the material at all.

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

I haven't seen them argue this anywhere. You've linked to their previous statement in which they only say that they "condemn" the fact that the weights are not being released.

The announcement says that they've filed the lawsuit "to enforce the consequences of the license termination" because "ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products."

> But GPLv3 doesn’t give you the ability to terminate a license arbitrarily; it requires you meet some specific criteria, and it’s unclear that ChessBase meets it.

You seem to be talking about this paragraph in the GPLv3 (https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/sf_14/C...) :

"Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice."

However, this is not ChessBase's first violation. They've also tried to pass off Houdini as original work: https://shop.chessbase.com/en/products/houdini_6_pro_multipr...

Houdini 6 is also a stockfish clone. https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/29181/is-houdini-6...

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#243

Post by nemetroid » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

jimmytucson wrote: post #236

dmurray wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people (Red Hat, Richard Stallman...) charge money for open-source software, so this seems a moot question. This case is a bit different though: Chessbase (unlike RH and RMS) didn't tell anyone their product was open source, but pretended it was their own proprietary work and that it was better than the leading open source engine that it was stolen from.

I don't think so. Red Hat Linux - the software - is free under GPL. Red Hat the company charges for support, training, and documentation. ChessBase charges for the software, which means they're either not compliant with the terms of GPL, or there's some other aspect of the software they're not obligated to share. I'm particularly interested if it's the latter. But I'm just wading into this subject matter, so others c…

As far as I know, Red Hat does not provide compiled binaries without a (typically paid) Red Hat license.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#244

Post by jeremyjh » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

ThomasCM wrote: post #238

jeremyjh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opening Tree is great and I use it a lot but it does not persist my games - I have to download them every time I use it. But I'd love an app with that interface that could persist the data and cross-check it with my repertoire. I guess it would not have to be same tool as the repertoire trainer, it just seems cleaner to have it all in one tool. But you are right Listudy can help with the spaced repetition, it just do…

I'm currently developing this: https://www.chessmonitor.com/ It stores your games and gives you an explorer for your games similar to what openingtree does. Here is an example for the current world champion: https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj/explorer

Wow that is awesome! Great work!

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#245

Post by remus » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #228

andi999 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a bank know?

They wouldn't since the property deed was transferred; as long as a court doesn't rule that the transfer was illegal because of forged signatures, the bank won't / shouldn't do anything - what if the accusation is baseless. If a court does rule that the transfer was fraudulent, the bank can cancel the mortgage and demand immediate repayment. Of course, once it's time for a criminal to pay up, both they and the money…

> They wouldn't since the property deed was transferred; as long as a court doesn't rule that the transfer was illegal because of forged signatures, the bank won't / shouldn't do anything - what if the accusation is baseless.

The bank isn't under any obligation to give you a mortgage. From their point of view they're lending you a big wedge of cash with the property as collateral, so they should be trying to satisfy themselves that the collateral is enough to cover the loan in case you default. If there's a non-negligible chance that the person they're lending the money to doesn't actually own the property (e.g. they're tied up in a legal dispute over ownership) then the bank has no collateral and is taking on a big risk.

> If a court does rule that the transfer was fraudulent, the bank can cancel the mortgage and demand immediate repayment.

What if the person doesn't have any means to pay back the mortgage? The bank has then just made a chunky loss. This is why the bank will typically do background checks on the property to establish ownership, condition of the property, environmental risks etc. (though this doesn't seem to have happened here, or the checks weren't overly thorough).

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#246

Post by nuclearnice1 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

codehotter wrote: post #240

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this makes no sense; the weights are distributed with every copy of Fat Fritz 2. (Otherwise, how would the program run? This reasoning isn’t correct. The weights may be as object code not as source. Simply saying the program runs doesn’t mean you’ve distributed the weights anymore than it means your distributed the code. Last time this came up people pointed at the installation information clause > “Installatio…

While it seems plausible that the network weights would fall under the "installation information" clause - the intention seems to be to limit this clause to consumer products (e.g. a Digital Video Recorder) and it's not clear that it can apply to Fat Fritz 2. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/sf_14/C...

Good eye. It’ll be interesting if more formal legal debate on this gets published

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#247

Post by lupire » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #124

I've read through this thread and I haven't seen a simple summary of the situation as it stands with respect to copying and the GPL violation. Here's what I believe to have happened: 1. ChessBase began selling the Fat Fritz 2 chess engine. 2. It came to the attention of Stockfish developers that FF2 is a Stockfish derivative "with a few lines of code modification". [1] 3. Stockfish notified ChessBase of the violation…

network weighta are BOTH output of the network and input.

That's the feedback loop of a neural net.

The fuzzy part is if it counts as source code. for example, you can redistribute gpl code with additional proprietary data files for art.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#248

Post by andi999 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

remus wrote: post #245

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't since the property deed was transferred; as long as a court doesn't rule that the transfer was illegal because of forged signatures, the bank won't / shouldn't do anything - what if the accusation is baseless. If a court does rule that the transfer was fraudulent, the bank can cancel the mortgage and demand immediate repayment. Of course, once it's time for a criminal to pay up, both they and the money…

> They wouldn't since the property deed was transferred; as long as a court doesn't rule that the transfer was illegal because of forged signatures, the bank won't / shouldn't do anything - what if the accusation is baseless. The bank isn't under any obligation to give you a mortgage. From their point of view they're lending you a big wedge of cash with the property as collateral, so they should be trying to satisfy…

I wouldn't be surprised if some jurisdiction still allow the banks to use the property as a collateral even if the 'real' owner didn't agree.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#249

Post by omega3 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

thom wrote: post #162

omega3 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it utter garbage, it has a good library, works reasonably quickly and does analysis.

The database is good. It's large, well curated and annotated. The UI is terrible, a sad relic from the MDI era. It's absolutely _not_ quick (you can constantly see it repainting, for example), search is extremely clunky, tools for match prep are awful, and it doesn't really have any good learning features. There's some vaguely interesting recent stuff like novelty mining but it's very limited (and why charge so much…

Sure it could be better but to say it's utter garbage is a hyperbole.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#250

Post by dmurray » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

jimmytucson wrote: post #236

dmurray wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people (Red Hat, Richard Stallman...) charge money for open-source software, so this seems a moot question. This case is a bit different though: Chessbase (unlike RH and RMS) didn't tell anyone their product was open source, but pretended it was their own proprietary work and that it was better than the leading open source engine that it was stolen from.

I don't think so. Red Hat Linux - the software - is free under GPL. Red Hat the company charges for support, training, and documentation. ChessBase charges for the software, which means they're either not compliant with the terms of GPL, or there's some other aspect of the software they're not obligated to share. I'm particularly interested if it's the latter. But I'm just wading into this subject matter, so others c…

> ChessBase charges for the software, which means they're either not compliant with the terms of GPL, or there's some other aspect of the software they're not obligated to share.

It's very clear from the story that it's the first one: they're not compliant with the GPL. At least that's what the Stockfish authors are claiming. They're pretty obviously acting in good faith and appear to be correct in their claim. ChessBase haven't laid out their side of the story other than their marketing materials saying "we developed the software in house and it's better than that open source stuff" and I wouldn't expect them to have a defence based on anything other than technicalities. You won't be seeing a blog post from them, because their lawyers have told them to say nothing.