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Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

lichess.org

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Re: Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

#61

Post by Bakary »

chongli wrote: post #54
jojobas wrote: post #53

Would it finally be the case where a GPL violator is taken to court?

Hopefully. I also hope this gets spread throughout the online chess community so that ChessBase gets their name dragged through the mud, as they rightfully should, for this blatant plagiarism. Taking the work of others, erasing their name and inserting your own, is the kind of crap we expect from lousy cheaters in high school, not businesses who want to establish themselves in a market based on a centuries-old global…

The market and the history of the game is precisely the reason they became like this. It's hard to build a profitable server platform that can compete with what's already there. Engines are already very advanced, especially on the open-source front. Free resources are plentiful. Bookshelves are already crowded and chess-related articles probably don't make that much money. To make a successful app, you'd need some name recognition like Magnus. Coaching services are probably a no-go as well, since a professional player interested in that can always get a lucrative deal with chess.com or chess24 if they are high-profile or simply quickly get clients on their own and not have to pay a percentage.

All that is really left is targeting people who can't or won't perform even the most cursory research relating to their purchases.

Re: Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

#63

Post by Karunamon »

sergiotapia wrote: post #60

Meh, it's within the guidelines of the license. If you don't want companies taking your work and selling it, please use a different license.

Arguably no, taking the neural network weights into account. The Chessbase folks seem to think that this isn't part of the code, the Stockfish folks disagree.

As described in the article, selling it isn't the problem. Selling it and refusing to live up to the license obligations is.

Re: Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

#64

Post by xiphias2 »

zucker42 wrote: post #57

Have there been any court cases about whether neural net weights can be included under software licenses?

Copyright doesn't make a distinction between software and other text, but GPL3 probably does, and maybe allows changed weights without them being released (unlike software, where it's explicitly stated). I didn't read the license though.

Re: Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

#65

Post by sergiotapia »

Karunamon wrote: post #63
sergiotapia wrote: post #60

Meh, it's within the guidelines of the license. If you don't want companies taking your work and selling it, please use a different license.

Arguably no, taking the neural network weights into account. The Chessbase folks seem to think that this isn't part of the code, the Stockfish folks disagree. As described in the article, selling it isn't the problem. Selling it and refusing to live up to the license obligations is.

That's up for debate, let the lawyers duke it out. To me, it's like suing for an xml file with different values. It'll be who has the bigger lawyers.

To stockfish dev, you should change your license.

Re: Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

#66

Post by kragen »

xiphias2 wrote: post #64
zucker42 wrote: post #57

Have there been any court cases about whether neural net weights can be included under software licenses?

Copyright doesn't make a distinction between software and other text, but GPL3 probably does, and maybe allows changed weights without them being released (unlike software, where it's explicitly stated). I didn't read the license though.

No, but copyright (in the US and US-influenced countries) does make a crucial distinction between work that is an expression of human creativity and work that doesn't, even more strongly since Feist. If the weights are a dump from some kind of ML training algorithm, it's likely that they're not copyrightable under US law.

Re: Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

#68

Post by mappu »

kragen wrote: post #66
xiphias2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright doesn't make a distinction between software and other text, but GPL3 probably does, and maybe allows changed weights without them being released (unlike software, where it's explicitly stated). I didn't read the license though.

No, but copyright (in the US and US-influenced countries) does make a crucial distinction between work that is an expression of human creativity and work that doesn't, even more strongly since Feist . If the weights are a dump from some kind of ML training algorithm, it's likely that they're not copyrightable under US law.

This (to its logical absurd extreme) would mean that compiled binaries are not copyrightable and only source code is.

The GPL is clear here: you must release sources in the preferred form of the work for making changes in it. For a neural network, that is the training data, models and scripts - unless you really are just editing the final weights.

Re: Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish

#70

Post by zucker42 »

Bakary wrote: post #61
chongli wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully. I also hope this gets spread throughout the online chess community so that ChessBase gets their name dragged through the mud, as they rightfully should, for this blatant plagiarism. Taking the work of others, erasing their name and inserting your own, is the kind of crap we expect from lousy cheaters in high school, not businesses who want to establish themselves in a market based on a centuries-old global…

The market and the history of the game is precisely the reason they became like this. It's hard to build a profitable server platform that can compete with what's already there. Engines are already very advanced, especially on the open-source front. Free resources are plentiful. Bookshelves are already crowded and chess-related articles probably don't make that much money. To make a successful app, you'd need some na…

Chessbase still has the most popular database software, which is used by many (most?) good players. That's not really an expanding market though.
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