The Stockfish team has filed a lawsuit against Chessbase, claiming that the German chess software company is selling their software without having the license to do so. Kundli software free. download full version in hindi for mac. The lawsuit, filed in a German court, was announced last Tuesday in a blog on the Stockfish website.
The Stockfish team argues that Chessbase has 'concealed from their customers Stockfish as the true origin of key parts of their products,' namely Fat Fritz 2 and Houdini 6. According to the Stockfish team, Chessbase has 'repeatedly violated central obligations of the GPL,' which refers to informing software users of their rights. 'These rights are explicit in the license and include access to the corresponding sources, and the right to reproduce, modify and distribute GPLed programs royalty-free,' the Stockfish team writes.
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In February, Chess.com reported extensively on the feud between the open-source chess community and Chessbase. Back then, the teams behind Stockfish and another open-source chess program, Leela Chess Zero, claimed that the engine in Fat Fritz 2 is Stockfish with minimal changes, that Fat Fritz 2 violated the GNU General Public License under which Stockfish was released, and that Chessbase's marketing has made false claims about Fat Fritz 2's playing strength.
Over the past four months, the Stockfish team, together with a certified copyright and media law attorney in Germany, has continued to point its arrows toward Chessbase. In their blog of this week, the developers claim that they managed to recall the Fat Fritz 2 DVD and ensure the termination of sales of Houdini 6.
While Houdini 6 currently has the status 'unavailable' in the Chessbase webshop, the sale of Fat Fritz 2 was discontinued in March 2021. However, at the moment their webshop has a product called Fat Fritz 2.0 SE. One of the Stockfish developers told Chess.com that this is an altered version that contains a different binary, GPL license text, and some sources, and it's not clear if it's now GPL-compliant.
Despite these changes made by Chessbase, the lawsuit has been filed. The reason is that the Stockfish team has terminated permanently their GPL license with Chessbase, but the group of developers claim that the Hamburg-based company still distributes Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products. They argue that Chessbase is now selling software without a license, which is a copyright violation.
'We believe we have the evidence, the financial means, and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end,' the Stockfish team writes.
Albert Silver, the main developer behind Fat Fritz 2, wrote in an email to Chess.com:
Even if I wanted to, I could not comment on something I know nothing about. The first I learned anything about this subject was via that same link, and it is still all I know.
Chessbase co-founder Matthias Wullenweber wrote:
We still haven't got the actual filed papers so we cannot comment. It is probably different from how Stockfish describes it because that would be refutable.
One can righteously criticize the articles about Fat Fritz on Chessbase.com which constituted an unacceptable belittlement of Stockfish. The reverse belittlement of Albert's innovations by SF does not balance this, even if they now seem to follow his path with SF 14. We behaved insensitively and we apologized for it. However, the legal side felt always OK and normal. E.g. advertisements and the packaging have clearly stated since February that Fat Fritz 2 is based on the open-source engine Stockfish, usually as the first claim/bullet point.
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So at the moment, we expect to win, but this will not diminish our respect for the work behind Stockfish.
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The Stockfish project strongly believes in free and open-source software and data. Collaboration is what made this engine the strongest chess engine in the world. We license our software using the GNU General Public License, Version 3 (GPL) with the intent to guarantee all chess enthusiasts the freedom to use, share and change all versions of the program.
Unfortunately, not everybody shares this vision of openness. We have come to realize that ChessBase concealed from their customers Stockfish as the true origin of key parts of their products (see also earlier blog posts by us and the joint Lichess, Leela Chess Zero, and Stockfish teams). Indeed, few customers know they obtained a modified version of Stockfish when they paid for Fat Fritz 2 or Houdini 6 - both Stockfish derivatives - and they thus have good reason to be upset. ChessBase repeatedly violated central obligations of the GPL, which ensures that the user of the software is informed of their rights. These rights are explicit in the license and include access to the corresponding sources, and the right to reproduce, modify and distribute GPLed programs royalty-free.
In the past four months, we, supported by a certified copyright and media law attorney in Germany, went through a long process to enforce our license. Even though we had our first successes, leading to a recall of the Fat Fritz 2 DVD and the termination of the sales of Houdini 6, we were unable to finalize our dispute out of court. Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. However, ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products.
Thus, to enforce the consequences of the license termination, we have filed a lawsuit. This lawsuit is broadly supported by the team of maintainers and developers of Stockfish. We believe we have the evidence, the financial means and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end. We will provide an update to this statement once significant progress has been made.
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We would like to thank our fans for their support, and encourage them to download and use the official version of Stockfish that we enjoy developing and sharing freely.