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Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

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Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#11

Post by Xylakant »

lloeki wrote: post #9
yewenjie wrote: post #5

> Critically, the agreement includes no financial compensation for the Stockfish team, not even legal fees. Why not the legal fees, at least?

> The parties are involved in the litigation before the District Court Munich I, Case No. 42 0 9765/21 German court. Someone will probably correct me on this, but I seem to recall that in Germany legal fees are typically not covered.

It depends. Settlements can stipulate anything. If you loose in court, you usually have to pay the winners legal fees, but the cap is what's laid out in the Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz and depends on the value of the dispute and other factors (how complicated the legal matter, ...). The winning party would still need to pay the share above that.

If you loose/win partially, the court decides on the share of cost that each party will need to pay.

The difference to the US system is that the potential costs of loosing a case can be determined pretty well in advance and that the other side cannot threaten to rack up infinite costs by racking up lawyer hours.

> edit: corrected the spelling of Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#12

Post by Xylakant »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #2

This isn't a win for open source. As much as I'd like it to be, settlements do nothing for open source aside from maybe give hope to others that the Defendant's felt the need to settle rather than try to argue the legality of their position in court. Winning in court has different meanings. Usually a settlement can be considered a win for the Plaintiff and Defendant together, and prevents more costly litigation for t…

This case was brought in a German court. There is no case law in Germany - decisions do usually not bind other courts, even lower courts (unless you're at the highest possible level, Bundesgerichtshof or the constitutional court). This settlement comes with pretty harsh conditions and pointing to it can be useful as a deterrence.

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#13

Post by bandrami »

Xylakant wrote: post #11
lloeki wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parties are involved in the litigation before the District Court Munich I, Case No. 42 0 9765/21 German court. Someone will probably correct me on this, but I seem to recall that in Germany legal fees are typically not covered.

It depends. Settlements can stipulate anything. If you loose in court, you usually have to pay the winners legal fees, but the cap is what's laid out in the Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz and depends on the value of the dispute and other factors (how complicated the legal matter, ...). The winning party would still need to pay the share above that. If you loose/win partially, the court decides on the share of cost tha…

> Rechtsanwaltvergütungsgesetzt

German spelling bees only last one round

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#14

Post by Xylakant »

bandrami wrote: post #13
Xylakant wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. Settlements can stipulate anything. If you loose in court, you usually have to pay the winners legal fees, but the cap is what's laid out in the Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz and depends on the value of the dispute and other factors (how complicated the legal matter, ...). The winning party would still need to pay the share above that. If you loose/win partially, the court decides on the share of cost tha…

> Rechtsanwaltvergütungsgesetzt German spelling bees only last one round

Up until 2004 it was the Bundesrechtsanwaltsgebührenordnung, so it did get easier (and I still misspelled it. no points for me)

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#15

Post by arrrg »

bandrami wrote: post #13
Xylakant wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. Settlements can stipulate anything. If you loose in court, you usually have to pay the winners legal fees, but the cap is what's laid out in the Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz and depends on the value of the dispute and other factors (how complicated the legal matter, ...). The winning party would still need to pay the share above that. If you loose/win partially, the court decides on the share of cost tha…

> Rechtsanwaltvergütungsgesetzt German spelling bees only last one round

Spelling bees aren’t really a thing in Germany, I think mostly because German language is too regular and not idiosyncratic enough when it comes to spelling (unlike English) to make those interesting.

Learning correct spelling is still important and still a skill that has to be taught, so I don’t want to chalk it all up to that.

Especially compound nouns like that one you quoted, however, that are just constructed from very simple German words (no loan words) are usually no problem when it comes to spelling.

I’m fact, my own spelling troubles as a native German speaker are mostly limited to some loan words and grammatical issues. I always struggle with which preposition to pick („dem“ or „den“) because I never properly learned to think about cases.

(There actually is a spelling mistake in that word, though. The “t” in the end is not correct.)

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#16

Post by Xylakant »

arrrg wrote: post #15
bandrami wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rechtsanwaltvergütungsgesetzt German spelling bees only last one round

Spelling bees aren’t really a thing in Germany, I think mostly because German language is too regular and not idiosyncratic enough when it comes to spelling (unlike English) to make those interesting. Learning correct spelling is still important and still a skill that has to be taught, so I don’t want to chalk it all up to that. Especially compound nouns like that one you quoted, however, that are just constructed fr…

There are actually at least two spelling errors in that word - there’s an “s” missing as well: Rechtsanwalt_s_vergütungsgesetz.

In my defense, typing this on a mobile phone with (english) autocorrect interference makes it harder. In their defense - they copied and pasted my earlier spelling error in the text, so they’re not to blame.

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#17

Post by Sesse__ »

TylerE wrote: post #6
SargeZT wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Every single serious chess master uses Chessbase as it has the largest database available out there even though the price is pretty obscene. The customer base is more dedicated than most and it's probably the single most important tool a chess pro can get outside of an engine itself. Edit: It may not be the single largest database, I suspect that honor goes to Chess.com or Lichess, but it is certainly the larges…

It’s not even about the database per se… what’s not easily replicated are the annotated (commented/analyzed) games, high quality metadata. This actual software, in terms of UI, is basically shit, and the technology is questionable (search really should be an order faster - my understanding is it has to do a full sequential read of the main DB (which is several GB)

Depends on what you're searching for. For position lookup, there's an index; for something like a given player, it's likely to be a linear scan.

Some format documentation:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160329061708/http://rybkaforum...

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&...

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#18

Post by kriro »

yewenjie wrote: post #5

> Critically, the agreement includes no financial compensation for the Stockfish team, not even legal fees. Why not the legal fees, at least?

I have not followed this saga at all but for individuals, legal fees are also usually covered by insurance in Germany (I'm assuming this applies for the stockfish team). So, assuming they have legal insurance (which is quite common) it'll be covered by that.

The potential fees are also capped and reasonably easy to know in advance.

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#19

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 »

Xylakant wrote: post #12
encryptluks2 wrote: post #2

This isn't a win for open source. As much as I'd like it to be, settlements do nothing for open source aside from maybe give hope to others that the Defendant's felt the need to settle rather than try to argue the legality of their position in court. Winning in court has different meanings. Usually a settlement can be considered a win for the Plaintiff and Defendant together, and prevents more costly litigation for t…

This case was brought in a German court. There is no case law in Germany - decisions do usually not bind other courts, even lower courts (unless you're at the highest possible level, Bundesgerichtshof or the constitutional court). This settlement comes with pretty harsh conditions and pointing to it can be useful as a deterrence.

>There is no case law in Germany - decisions do usually not bind other courts, even lower courts

So is there just a really big rule book? How is legality decided?

Re: Win for Open-Source Legally: Settlement Reached in Stockfish vs. ChessBase

#20

Post by littlestymaar »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #19
Xylakant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This case was brought in a German court. There is no case law in Germany - decisions do usually not bind other courts, even lower courts (unless you're at the highest possible level, Bundesgerichtshof or the constitutional court). This settlement comes with pretty harsh conditions and pointing to it can be useful as a deterrence.

>There is no case law in Germany - decisions do usually not bind other courts, even lower courts So is there just a really big rule book? How is legality decided?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)
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