Most of you will by now have read from both sides of the debate. I find that people who focus on the process, personalities and ICCGA behaviour tend to be on Rybka's side, and people who focus on the technical side tend to believe that Rybka has indeed had improper copied code in it. I've tried to craft questions to allow people to answer the points that are most in contention.

Even if guilty, a lifetime ban seems extreme ridiculous. In what other sport can you get a lifetime ban, and for what infractions? (I suppose if you kill, roast and eat the referee on the field, that'd come with a lifetime ban).

David Levy's response regarding Rule 2 can basically fall under the "We're just following orders" excuse. That's weak. If you know the rule is outdated and irrelevant, why use it? That's the hallmark of a bean-counter, bureaucrat, or a mindless cubicle-raised drone or automaton.

Apparently he's drafting a response to Riis' articles. Will see how he approaches that.

David Levy is my adopted brother - so please watch what you say about him.

I know that he has high moral standards and has been taken advantage of big time in the past. I can't speak for him, but he may have been reacting while thinking "I can't let this happen to me again".

I know he has worked very diligently to see that all chess computer competitions are fair and the rules were made to make sure someone wasn't scamming the organization.

This being said, I still think 'ban for life' was much too strong, and I hope they will modify that. I think that taking back the trophies is enough for the slight rule infraction.

I have no doubt about his integrity, Inky, or his honesty. Neither did Riis, who emphasized that several times. So no slight or insult intended there. Being absolutely honest and highly intelligent though is not a protection against bean-counter mentality--that is, someone who very diligently follows the rules and applies the rules even if the rules are ludicrous or irrelevant, and even if the end result is not commensurate with the misdeed (like throwing a jobless man in jail for three years because he tried to steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving children).

There are times and places for bean-counters, but in this case their mindset led to a penalty far far too high. If their line of thinking brings them to that end-point, then somewhere something has gone wrong with their line of thinking and they need to re-examine things.

Now they've come across as being overly vindictive, giving fuel to those who say it is about jealousy because Rybka was so much stronger than other engines. Personally, I doubt that motive--you don't need to resort to ulterior motives when our 'software' failings (e.g. rote rule following) suffice.

Hey! Easy with the attacks on bean-counters! First of all the person you are describing is a judge or some other kind of law officer - not a bean counter. Second of all this kind of over-generalization is what hurtful messages are made of. Neither your facts nor your hurtful descriptions have anything to do with the noble accounting profession (i.e. bean counters).

Consider this...

Being ridiculously tanned and highly overdressed is not a protection against Ken mentality--that is, someone who very diligently picks his sweaters and follows Barby around even if the end result is not commensurate with his intentions (like asking children for ridiculous sums of money for little Ken dolls while their parents are unemployed - likely because someone shut down their accounting firm).

There -how does this feel?

I like how the poll uses the term 'probably'. I've read a lot of the evidence myself, and there's no doubt in my mind about Vas's guilt. Whether or not the punishment was too extreme is another argument completely. The fact of the matter is he DID copy the code. Fanboys can try to deny it all they want, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and was even on his side... Until I saw evidence against him. There was simply no denying what he had done, not 'probably' had done. Vas's own sort of bemused 'aw they caught me, but I don't care cuz I got the loot' attitude made it even worse.

Edit: and before you try to debate me on the evidence, know that I read HOURS of accounts on the topic by the people involved in judging Vas, the fanboys that then flamed them, and their perfectly logical explanations. SO I'm not about to rehash all that here, especially when they did a much better job of it. It would be a waste of my time and yours, since you're a fanboy and I'm a realist, and we're not going to change either of our standpoints.

I second what he said

I'll take Wrong Assumptions for a thousand, Alex.

I don't care one way or the other (so you're right it would be a waste of time for you to explain). The whole thing for me is an idle mind-break from my work, something to distract me for a bit, something so inconsequential I hadn't even considered there might be a forum where this was being discussed heatedly (and even if I had, I have other things to do than read it). I hardly recognized Vas' name and didn't associate it with Rybka--although I should have--till I read more about it; indeed I haven't even been following chess all that much for the past 12 months and haven't played an actual game for....years now?

So I'm not arguing about his innocence or guilt...I really don't know...and don't really care. I fell on the probably not guilty side by default (innocent till proven guilty + my own slight pirate attitude to software) but the more I've been reading, I'm moving into the probably guilty under the rules as they stand (relevant or irrelevant--that's my pirate attitude again).

Quasi--apologies to the bean-counters then. Perhaps in your experience bean-counters aren't the ones who exhibit this mentality. You don't have to be an actual bean-counter to have bean-counter mentality, and being a bean-counter doesn't mean you will have a bean-counter mentality.

Perhaps I should use the term "legalistic mentality" instead of "bean-counter mentality" to avoid the confusion between "state of mind" and "occupation"--it is about following the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law (now I've annoyed the lawyers--same explanation as above though).

So my main point is they enforced a rule despite its irrelevance (letter of the law), and then defended their decision by saying "We were only following the rules". Guilty or innocent or in-between, the panel's reactions/punishment are indicative of a legalistic aka bean-counter mindset.


Confusing. Reminded me of comments by former CN DeepNf3--which I liked by the way--the 'lateral thinking' and 'connecting the unseen dots' exercises were like fun puzzles.

Quick aside: Based on the material you've posted in the past, this carries some weight). If a supporter of your level of knowledge and computing/engine diligence went from probably not guilty to guilty based on the evidence that you've examined yourself then that says something about the strength of the evidence against Vas.

First, I don't consider myself a Rybka fanboy.

But I too went over most (if not all of) the evidence and I happen to think it is a case of some losers settling the scores behind the scenes with the guy who had bested them.

I too wouldn't want to go into much detail, but it seemed to me a lot of "evidence" was not even against Rybka, but some some decompiled version of Rybka done by some Russian hackers that also put their own code in. And if some of the code in question is indeed Rybka's, some of that evidence also leaves a lot to be desired, too - like, they would say things like "this piece of Rybka code is like Fruit, but with some modifications". Well, if some modifications are made, it is not exactly a copy, is it? Not to mention the idea that the Fruit code might be in Rybka, but might not be executed, or - at least - not executed in a meaningful way, etc. Then there is confusion about which Rybka versions were decompiled vs. which versions played in the events, etc. Basically, I think that most, if not all of the best programs would fail these kinds of reviews, if one operated with the kinds of assumption the Rybka accusers seemed to have.

The thing is, Railich wrote something it would take years for the rest of them to catch up with. When Rybka first appeared it was miles ahead of everything. It was the first program that actually played like a human grandmaster, and was very different from the silicone "bean counters" (to borrow a phrase from Ken) that all the computer programs had been up until that time. It was like a revolution in computer chess. If there has been a documented "theft" of software, it was theft FROM Rybka, not by Rybka. My understand is it is illegal to decompile Rybka in the first place - but that is exactly what the aforementioned rogue hackers (who were actually quite genius in their own way) and perhaps some others involved with the accusations/"code reviews" have done. But Rajlich had the gall to cash in on his breakthrough and these guys couldn't stand being so far behind for so long. Basically, they stole his ideas by decompiling Rybka, they found a way to legitimize those shady supposed "clones" by having them be published by obscure hacker groups- which enabled these guys to take Rajlich ideas for any purpose without any kind of regard for any license issues - and they got Rajlich banned on top of that. But the irony is that they still can't quite catch up to Rybka. There is one program that might be stronger (that is thought to be a clone of a clone of Rybka), but the rest are still behind. They are getting closer, though, as one might expect. One wonders how good their programs would have been had they worked on them as hard as they go after Rajlich.

Some of Rybka accusers are high profile members of the computer chess community - like Dr. Hyatt. Most anyone who ever wrote an engine or was ever interested in one probably had taken a look at Hyatt's Crafty code, as one example. Too bad Hyatt seems to have turned into one of the most vocal Rybka witch hunters.

That said, it has been a while since I looked at the evidence. Maybe there is more available now that would force me to change my mind. I was not impressed with what I saw before, though. Even if it were to be proven that Rybka had some of the game-playing code from Fruit, I strongly doubt it would be on the scale the accusers make it out to be. And on small scale, with ideas being taken that sometimes cannot be framed in any alternative way - I don't think Rybka would be more flagrant than other top engines.