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This will be easily won against ChessBase. They F'd up. German court does care way too much for the "Urheberrecht" -- copyright -- and this is clearly a violat

This will be easily won against ChessBase. They F'd up. German court does care way too much for the "Urheberrecht" -- copyright -- and this is clearly a violation of it. If they would let this go through, nobody would take the German court serious again, and there is too much interest in not letting that happen. In any case, they also sell a music software called "Ludwig 3" [1]. I now wouldn't be surprised if it also makes improper use of OSS libraries. [1] http://www.komponieren.de/arrangieren.html http://www.komponieren.de/arrangieren.html

MikeDelta 5y ago
Sounds like a business model.
- MikeDelta 5y ago
  Not my business model guys, but a business model used by parties out there that decide to misuse open source licenses and charge for basically a layer on top of the open source. If this company has two products that under the hood seem to rely heavily on open source but they don't mention it, then it sounds this is their business model.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I don’t think it will be so easily won: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900683 Note that it’s legal to sell stockfish as long as you’re compliant with GPLv3. ChessBase seems to be compliant. Stockfish argues that ChessBase isn’t compliant because they refuse to release the weights. But this makes no sense; the weights are distributed with every copy of Fat Fritz 2. (Otherwise, how would the program run? It’s not cloud-based, as far as I can tell.) Stockfish may be trying to say “you must open source any training code used to make the weights.” But this claim falls flat; you could use this same argument to say that any GPLv3 codebase must be fully open source in order to sell it, including all DLLs used by the program. Stockfish seems to be saying that they have grounds for lawsuit because they have terminated ChessBase’s license. But GPLv3 doesn’t give you the ability to terminate a license arbitrarily; it requires you meet some specific criteria, and it’s unclear that ChessBase meets it. I think it’s lame that ChessBase sold stockfish for $80. But that’s different than being illegal, and we should worry about the precedents set here.
- noxvilleza 5y ago
  They probably intend to apply this clause (under Termination) to terminate ChessBase's license: "Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third paragraph of section 11)."
- krick 5y ago
  I have no clue about all these copyright litigations and most make no sense to me anyway, but when you put it that way, yeah, that sounds like a weak claim. Again, no idea if a court would see it that way, but if you take it a step further you can almost claim that software is not GPL-3 compliant, because it's being developed using non open-source IDE. Oh, we cannot prove it? But then, we also cannot prove these NN weights are not crafted by hand, I guess.
  - brians 5y ago
    That’s actually been an issue for some non-GPL Smalltalk systems. What does it mean to distribute the “preferred form for modification” when that’s an image file for a closed-source interpreter? Same deal with GPL’d Mathematica code.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  They also allege that ChessBase didn’t inform users of their rights under the GPL, which would definitely be a license violation.
- nuclearnice1 5y ago
  > But this makes no sense; the weights are distributed with every copy of Fat Fritz 2. (Otherwise, how would the program run? This reasoning isn’t correct. The weights may be as object code not as source. Simply saying the program runs doesn’t mean you’ve distributed the weights anymore than it means your distributed the code. Last time this came up people pointed at the installation information clause > “Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made. > Corresponding Source conveyed, and Installation Information provided, in accord with this section must be in a format that is publicly documented (and with an implementation available to the public in source code form), and must require no special password or key for unpacking, reading or copying.

MikeDelta 5y ago

Sounds like a business model.

MikeDelta 5y ago
Not my business model guys, but a business model used by parties out there that decide to misuse open source licenses and charge for basically a layer on top of the open source. If this company has two products that under the hood seem to rely heavily on open source but they don't mention it, then it sounds this is their business model.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I don’t think it will be so easily won: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900683 Note that it’s legal to sell stockfish as long as you’re compliant with GPLv3. ChessBase seems to be compliant. Stockfish argues that ChessBase isn’t compliant because they refuse to release the weights. But this makes no sense; the weights are distributed with every copy of Fat Fritz 2. (Otherwise, how would the program run? It’s not cloud-based, as far as I can tell.) Stockfish may be trying to say “you must open source any training code used to make the weights.” But this claim falls flat; you could use this same argument to say that any GPLv3 codebase must be fully open source in order to sell it, including all DLLs used by the program. Stockfish seems to be saying that they have grounds for lawsuit because they have terminated ChessBase’s license. But GPLv3 doesn’t give you the ability to terminate a license arbitrarily; it requires you meet some specific criteria, and it’s unclear that ChessBase meets it. I think it’s lame that ChessBase sold stockfish for $80. But that’s different than being illegal, and we should worry about the precedents set here.

noxvilleza 5y ago
They probably intend to apply this clause (under Termination) to terminate ChessBase's license: "Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third paragraph of section 11)."
krick 5y ago
I have no clue about all these copyright litigations and most make no sense to me anyway, but when you put it that way, yeah, that sounds like a weak claim. Again, no idea if a court would see it that way, but if you take it a step further you can almost claim that software is not GPL-3 compliant, because it's being developed using non open-source IDE. Oh, we cannot prove it? But then, we also cannot prove these NN weights are not crafted by hand, I guess.
- brians 5y ago
  That’s actually been an issue for some non-GPL Smalltalk systems. What does it mean to distribute the “preferred form for modification” when that’s an image file for a closed-source interpreter? Same deal with GPL’d Mathematica code.
mr_toad 5y ago
They also allege that ChessBase didn’t inform users of their rights under the GPL, which would definitely be a license violation.
nuclearnice1 5y ago
> But this makes no sense; the weights are distributed with every copy of Fat Fritz 2. (Otherwise, how would the program run? This reasoning isn’t correct. The weights may be as object code not as source. Simply saying the program runs doesn’t mean you’ve distributed the weights anymore than it means your distributed the code. Last time this came up people pointed at the installation information clause > “Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made. > Corresponding Source conveyed, and Installation Information provided, in accord with this section must be in a format that is publicly documented (and with an implementation available to the public in source code form), and must require no special password or key for unpacking, reading or copying.