Author: Miguel A. Ballicora
Date: 14:08:25 11/08/01
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On November 08, 2001 at 09:52:47, Georg v. Zimmermann wrote: >At least not for me. > >I write this as a hint for people starting on a chess program or any other hobby >program, or planing to release their program. > >If you thinking about releasing it under GPL, "just say no" ! > >The last chess program which I worked on and for which I released source was my >crazyhouse program, "Sunsetter". I had the special permission of the original >author of the program it is based on, "Deep Bug", to distribute it without code >at first. After polishing the code I released it a few month ago in the hope to >get some feedback or hints on low level speed improvements or programming >technique , things I am very bad at. No suggestion ever. > >You might say "Well what kind of program is that anyway, probably some 2100elo >crafty clone". Well it isn't. It has toped both ICC and Fics best lists in its >category a while ago, if only for a couple of days. > >You might say "Well, who cares about this variant anway". True. > >So another chess related program I released under the GPL is called "Thief". It >is a chess client for playing on ICC, Fics, ... Like winboard, but with some >more features in some areas but no offline support for example. >It is used for more than 10% of the games on Fics. I get around 1-7 feature or >bug fix suggestion per week, but never *ever* has anyone apart from the original Never heard of thief, can you connect an engine to it? can you play engine-engine matches? Regards, Miguel >programmers comtributed anything, to code grafics or whatever. (Note that >someone else did 90% of the work on this program, but he handed it over to me >later. I am no fan of re-inventing the wheel. Others seem to be though.) > >You might say "Well, few people are playing chess online, and there are already >many online chess clients". Partly true. > >So another GPL'd chess program I used to work on and for which source was >available and still is on request is Zzzzz. The original program is a weak chess >program written in Delphi. I rewrote it to play automatic lectures, and to be >able to play without king (the one stalemated loses). The idea was that chess >rules are complex. And its easier for people to learn by starting to play right >away, for example only after having learned how the pawns move. >I also made the program very easy to operate and created a way for people to >contribute "interactive lessons". Again, some people were so kind to tell me >they or their son/daughter liked the program. But no contribution. Ever. > >Don't get me wrong. I am not saying the open source idea doesn't ever work. It >might work for big big projects like linux, or for programs like crafty (but >here I already doubt, how many of the code improvements per version are *not* >from Dr.Hyatt?) but else - forget it. > >Next I will probably try to start on a Go program. If someone wants to try that >as a group, that would be great fun. But making it open source - no way. > >Georg
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