Rybka Disqualified and Banned from Computer World Championships
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 12:22AM Some time ago I mentioned the accusations that Vas Rajlich, Rybka's programmer, had based his program on the chess engine "Fruit". Since then the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) has investigated the claims, and concluded in a 5-0 decision that Rajlich was guilty not only of improperly taking code from Fruit but from Crafty as well. They write that
We are convinced that the evidence against Vasik Rajlich is both overwhelming in its volume and beyond reasonable question in its nature. Vasik Rajlich is guilty of plagiarizing the programs Crafty and Fruit, and has violated the ICGA’s tournament rules with respect to the World Computer Chess Championships in the years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
As a result, Rajlich is banned for life from the World Computer Chess Championship and all other ICGA events, and Rybka's championships in 2007-2010 are vacated, along with the Rybka predecessors's =2nd finish in 2006. Strong punishment, but appropriate if they are right about the evidence.
Much more, here.
computer chess
Reader Comments (2)
Will they still be able to market Rybka now that it's found to be plagiarized? I assume that Rybka has already lost a lot of sales to other strong and free programs like Houdini or Stockfish, but this news can't help them any because now they can't market it as the computer world champion anymore.
I have read the first paper provided as evidence and I'm kind of wishy washy here. The code that is (and this is pretty certainly a fact) plagiarized is more or less stuff like, "is his position mate? is there mating material?, is this a draw by rule?" kind of stuff. It's not particular to evaluating the merits of a position.
So that is pretty smarmy of the author as he should have written his own and perhaps he copied this because it's faster than what he came up with? At the same time, it's not the kind of thing that would decide a move really.
That said, the paper i read was particular to the rip off crafty. The other paper documents ripping off fruit - and this may very well detail similarities in the evaluation functions that matter most.