Loic,
I apologize for my ignorance. I don't think that the bot that I used
last year linked up to any GNU GPL code, but I'll have to check, as it was
written very last minute. So, just so I understand correctly... It would be
legal to create a bot, and log onto servers to play it, but illegal to
submit one to a competition where it plays locally on a set of machines.
I have written a some C++ headers which do a couple higher level hand
analyses, and rely on pokerlib's handRank. If I were to write a much slower
handRank, so that the headers could either be linked to pokerlib, or stand
alone, what license would you recommend it be released with? I'd like people
to be able to use it for academic purposes, but otherwise have the same
restrictions/freedoms as GNU GPL.
Thuerriedl,
That's me, and thank you. I really wanted the bot to be names INOT (In
The
Nick Of Time), but I didn't have the time to change the name, because it was
completed, well... in the nick of time. I don't think that they discarded
hand evaluation, just duplicated the functionality of the library.
The approaches you can take to build a bot really depend on your time
and
skill level. Right now it looks like there will be a heads-up limit,
heads-up no-limit, and a 3-player competition. This is still being discussed
at http://aicml-poker.cs.ualberta.ca/bb/index.php l-p: poker. Which
competition is best depends on what type of bot you have in mind. If you are
planning on making a rules based bot (i.e. Using your knowledge of poker to
hand code what actions should be taken, and when) then I would not recommend
heads-up limit. In fact, I'd only recommend heads-up limit if you are making
something based on psuedo-equalibrium solutions. Last years no-limit winner
was (to the best of my knowledge) a game theory inspired rules based bot.
Can a psuedo-equalibrium bot beat that given the huge game space involved? I
don't know, but we'll find out. 3-player is an open problem. There is
currently no program in existence (to my knowledge) that plays a mediocre
game of 3-player hold'em. The nice convergence properties that allow for
psuedo-equalibrium solutions in two player games break down in three
players. They might still work, but we don't know. The vastly bigger game
space also poses a problem. If a pure equilibrium approach doesn't work, a
combination rules and equilibrium might be the best. there are also other
strategies such as Bayesian reasoning (monash and others), neural networks
(POKI), and Monte Carlo simulation (poki) which may turn out to be gold.
Good luck!!
Hope that helps,
Ian
-----Original Message-----
From: Thuerriedl Reinhard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 6:46 AM
To: Loic Dachary; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: AW: [Pokersource-users] poker-eval library license
Hi All,
@Loic:
Thank you for answering all of my questions! Maybe I shouldn't bother about
sorting out licensing problems right now, because I am just at the beginning
of my work. My bot may as well turn out to be of no use at all and then
there is clearly no point in submitting it to a competition or making it
public anyway.
Nevertheless, as I mentioned before, I like the idea of Open Source and I
can tell the difference between free beer and free software, so I am not
only interested in the legal restrictions imposed by the GNU GPL but also in
the intentions of the authors who make their work open source. I'll make up
my mind about this issue and hope that we can resume our conversation about
it soon.
@Ian:
Are you the Ian Fellows from UCSD who is the author of Ianbot and took
second place in the Limit Equilibrium category of the 2007 AAAI Poker Bot
Competition? If so, congratulations! I also doubt that the UoA team totally
discarded what they once incorporated as a core function. If you are who I
think you are, maybe you can make any suggestions about how to approach the
task of building a competitive poker bot (without conflicting with the GNU
GPL or other licenses). I really would appreciate this very much.
All the best for your future work!
Kind regards,
Reinhard
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Loic Dachary [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Gesendet: Fr 16.11.2007 07:40
An: Ian Fellows
Cc: Thuerriedl Reinhard; [email protected]
Betreff: Re: [Pokersource-users] poker-eval library license
"Ian Fellows" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Hi All,
>
> It is my understanding that LOKI was never distributed as a
proprietary
> or open source bot. Is it against the terms of the license to use the bot
> for personal or academic purposes if you don't distribute the software to
> third parties? POKI on the other hand was incorporated into poker academy,
> and so was sparbot (PSIOPTI). Both of these use hand strength and
potential
> calculations that were at least originally based on this library. I'm sure
> that the poker academy crew duplicated the functionality when they turned
> into published software. It is my (naive uneducated) understanding that
you
> can do whatever you want with the library if you don't distribute your
work.
> Thus, I don't see any conflicts with submitting something with components
of
> pokersource to the AAAI competition. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
You are wrong, but it's a common mistake and it's very easy to fix
when dealing with Free Software. In copyright law, publishing a software
or distributing it means you hand it to someone else. To someone that is
not you.
As a rule of thumb, think that each time you deliberately avoid
sharing the software with someone else, you go against the spirit
encapsulated in the GNU GPL. And therefore it is polite, in addition
of being respectful of legal terms, to not avoid sharing, even if you
think you could.
If you'd like to talk about the specific legal implications, I'm
open for discussion. I'm currently dealing with a major GNU GPL violation
court case in France ( http://freebox.flouzo.net/ ) and all the details
are fresh in my mind ;-)
Again, mistakes are easily fixed and everybody wins.
Cheers,
--
+33 1 76 60 72 81 Loic Dachary mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Latitude: 48.86962325498033 Longitude: 2.3623046278953552
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