


The fault that most annoyed me was that the original version somehow entangled the new neural network in a way with the engine that made it unusable in any other context. According to Wüllenweber: “ With Stockfish we did not fulfill the GPLv3 requirements and frantically scrambled to fix this within days of the first publication.

Stockfish chess license code#
The code for the original Fat Fritz 2 has yet to be released.ĬhessBase admits they violated the license, although by mistake, and only briefly.
Stockfish chess license license#
After receiving the letter, Chessbase released a new product “Fat Fritz 2 SE”, packaged with a copy of the GPLv3 license and a copy of the source code with what appears to be a different, and weaker, neural net. Shortly after Fat Fritz 2 was released, the Stockfish team sent a cease and desist letter to ChessBase asking that they fulfill the requirements of their license for Fat Fritz 2, and, very importantly, also fulfill the license for any other ChessBase products that might contain Stockfish code. In this case, neither the Fat Fritz 2 code nor the license text was made available.
Stockfish chess license software#
In the case of the “GPLv3” license that Stockfish uses, that means you must inform users clearly that the software they are using is free software, and make the source code, with any modifications you’ve made, publicly available to use in the same way that the original is. Unlike proprietary software, the code from free software can be used free of charge in any other project, but you must fulfill other non-financial requirements of the license. This process not only produced Stockfish and Lichess, but other popular software like VLC, Firefox, and the Linux OS that probably runs the servers of all your favorite websites. The nature of this dispute can be difficult to explain to those that are not familiar with the Free Software design process. We also spoke with ChessBase CEO Matthias Wüllenweber. The case was of interest to free software advocates and chess players everywhere, so we sent a Lichess developer to the courtroom in Munich to witness events firsthand and report on them. This led to some significant recrimination, including on this very website. The battle between the two software makers began when ChessBase released a chess engine called “Fat Fritz 2” that was allegedly a repackaged version of Stockfish. Scid DB support using “Scid on the go”.On July 4th this year, after a lot of waiting, Stockfish and Chessbase finally got their first day in court.There’s lots of cosmetic tinkering available such as arrows, labels, animation of piece movements, and definable color settings.

For example, you can enable pondering which lets the chess engine think while waiting for the opponent’s move. There’s other ways of controlling the strength of play. There’s lots of configuration settings for time control, engine settings, hash table, and more besides.
