Dear Dr Kirkby, I am, as I told you, mostly an user. Whatever small programs I write are for my personal research and it is of rarely of use to most people in the world and I would feel flattered if anyone would want to copy my miserable code, and other people's lack of originality is not a life and death matter for me. I mostly try to get my work done, and help others get their work done.
My words are not original, you will find all of them in the dictionary, as Mark Twain pointed out. My code is rarely original. Most of the ideas I use can be found in Kernighan & Richie or some such text. My thoughts are rarely original too. My research work is also not extremely original or remotely earth-shaking. I might delude myself into thinking that something that I do is very original because it draws praise from others because they have not seen anything like it before, but subconsciously I must have been reproducing something pre-existing that has inspired me. There is no point claiming credit for it, or fighting over it. Every combination I produce over the board has been inspired by all the tactics exercises I have worked through. In any case, nobody will care a damn about who the hell is this Aniket Basu, because I am on the wrong side of thirty and have no past, present or future as a chess player. And nobody gives a damn about some irrelevant game I play in my little chess club here (though that should not reduce my pleasure in playing). Please realize that to most of your users, those lines in some obscure parts of your code is irrelevant unless there's a bug-fix. Nobody is going to look it up, nobody is going to give you any credit. But if people know that you worked your ass off to produce something useful for them, as did Pascal, they will respect you for it. If getting credit is a priority, please take care to mention your name in the documentation, so that Pascal or anyone can duly acknowledge it - or not acknowledge, at their risk. Does Pascal have to reinvent your code? Or would it be more original or more efficient of him if he merely renamed parts of your code to hide his tracks? Is he going to make some profit from this that you would cause you some grudge? Does his work amount to plagiarism with major benefits that are undeserved? If not, please make your peace with Pascal. I am sure both of you are doing some work that is useful to all of us. And there seem to be fewer bugs in your code than there are typos in your emails so maybe you are better off writing code than bickering over who should get credit. You and Pascal might even make a good team, and you can easily acknowledge each other's contribution. Spare us users the agony of acting the referee over something that is not our headache. I am sure we would all be extremely appreciative if you could settle this nicely amongst yourselves - that would a rare, original effort, and you wouldn't mind other people imitating you afterwards also in not losing your peace over trivia. Sorry for the sermon, and thanks for reading, Regards, Aniket On 15/02/07, Dr. David Kirkby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Aniket Basu wrote: > > Dear Dr Kirkby, > > > > I am merely an user of Scid, and would like to ignore this daily > > mudslinging, if it had not turned into such a daily deluge. I am > > trying to take an impartial view. I know neither you or Pascal, and I > > do not follow the details of your history - I give my personal work > > more importance than that and I hope others on this forum do so to - > > but my reaction should give you some indication of how you are > > beginning to appear to others. > > > > I am sure your "unintensional" (sic) typos were reproduced by Pascal, > > who is not a native speaker of English. If that is the kind of stuff > > that he swiped from you, then Pascal please acknowledge David for all > > the spelling errors he has introduced. > > > > If you have no other lines of code that Pascal swiped from you, then > > kindly drop this matter, else Pascal should acknowledge you too. > > > > This forum is for Scid-users, and not for juvenile bickering over > > copyrights over typos. > > > > Regards, > > > > Aniket > > > > > > Hi, > > The copied code is *not* restricted to an odd line with a typo in it, > new files I created and other files I modified, have all been copied. > I've long since suspected quite large chunks were copied, but it was not > until this evening I decided to look for a few, prompted by your email. > > Anyway, here are a few, which you can see if you compare his first > release which you can get from his archives. > > http://prolinux.free.fr/scid/download/archives/scid-3.6.1-pg.1.tgz > > with files I committed to CVS before that date or files releases before > his. > > 1) One really obvious example (although of zero use to him), is a file I > committed to CVS called "ChangeLog". > > http://chessdb.cvs.sourceforge.net/chessdb/chessdb/ChangeLog?revision=1.1&view=markup&pathrev=Version_3_6_4---18th-December-2006 > > His first release has that same file, but he renamed the file to > "ChangeLog.old" It's hard to understand how that file would have got > there any other way, unless he just took my sources and called them his. > > 2) Shanes original C++ code gave a lot of compiler warnings from the g++ > compiler. So I looked at the code and found all the problems and made > changes to files where necessary. > > In the file src/textbuf.h, you will see the comments in both my code and > Pascal's. > > // void ClearTranslation (char ch) { Translation[ch] = NULL; } > // Changed ch to int, to avoid compiler warnings. > > Those comments, although with the changes in the source, are all copied. > > 3) Also associated with the compiler warnings, but this time in > position.cpp, are the following lines: > > pieceFromByte [(int) 'K'] = WK; pieceFromByte [(int) 'k'] = BK; > pieceFromByte [(int) 'Q'] = WQ; pieceFromByte [(int) 'q'] = BQ; > pieceFromByte [(int) 'R'] = WR; pieceFromByte [(int) 'r'] = BR; > pieceFromByte [(int) 'B'] = WB; pieceFromByte [(int) 'b'] = BB; > pieceFromByte [(int) 'N'] = WN; pieceFromByte [(int) 'n'] = BN; > pieceFromByte [(int) 'P'] = WP; pieceFromByte [(int) 'p'] = BP; > > which are in my code and Pascals, but not Shanes. > > I had to change about 6 files to get rid of all the compiler warnings. I > have not checked them all, but the first three I checked were indeed > simply copied. > > 4) I've updated the tutorial quite a bit, and have a note in my startup > file which says to check the online tutorial for the very latest changes > on the web site. > > There is no such message in Shanes original code about the tutorial > being the very latest documentation. > > Since Pascal has no way to update the Scid web site, there is no reason > for him to write that the very latest documentation in on the web site. > > He simply copied my code. > > 5) All of the code associated with the blunder analysis was written by > Jeremy and first in ChessDB. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. 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