An Open Letter from Programmers on the Rybka-Fruit Issue

You can find it here, and it's not good news for Vas Rajlich and the Rybka side. There are some big names among the signatories (maybe they're all big names, but even I as an outsider to that community recognize some of the names), and I doubt that they can all be dismissed on the grounds of professional jealousy or something like that. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that this letter does not constitute legal proof. All the same, I wonder: what's the best program out there that doesn't have some sort of direct or indirect taint?

Comments

[K. Henriksen]

So what are the commercial consequences for Rybka if it's found that it's derived from Fruit 2.1? I predict not a whole lot since it's still one of the best chess engines out there and professional players will use whatever gives the best results for them.

I find it far more intriguing that Fruit was released under the GNU General Public License (as far as I know at least). This implies that Rybka's author could be compelled by a court of law (if it gets to that and the court finds the claim to be true) to either cease and desist publishing copies of or release the source code to Rybka.

[Chris Falter]

Assuming that Rybka programmers did make use of the Fruit source code as a template for their own efforts, the owners of the Fruit license (whatever open source group that happens to be) may be able to compel Rybka to release their source code back to Fruit, where of course it could be published. But not used by any other commercial competitor!