Author: Ed Trice
Date: 09:30:34 01/07/04
Go up one level in this thread
Hi Tord, > >Ed, > >In another post you wrote that your intention with the patent and the $1 >fee for releasing a free Gothic chess program was not to scare people >away from the game. Unfortunately, I fear that it will still have the >effect of scaring people away. I am not sure this is the case. Once someone releases the first Gothic Chess program, others will follow. >I consider your game to be a very good one, and you also have some really >impressive, interesting and well-researched stuff on your web pages. >Being a chess variant enthusiast myself, it is quite possible that I would >have added support for Gothic chess in my engine under different >circumstances. But the presence of a patent, a 1$ fee, and the need >for my engine to be officially licensed and available for download from >somebody else's is completely unacceptable to me. I think you are implying requirements were none were specified. I said once in compliance with the patent, you could make it available on your site as well. But my site probably gets a little more exposure at this instant in time, and more may download it from there than elsewhere. I think the presence of your software on my site will ease people's minds, don't you think? If it is on my site, how can it NOT be in compliance? :) Then they can visit your site, see it is available there as well, etc, everyone is happy. >I really don't want >to be involved in any kind of legal or commercial issues, no matter how >trivial. All I want is to create strategic game-playing programs and >give them away to everybody who happen to find it fun to play against them. Every time you run any kind of program, you are subject to legal issues (as per the licensing agreement, etc.) Look at Adobe Photoshop. Did you know that was patented? Every time you use it, you are accepting terms of the patent. Same thing is true in this case. >Of course I could afford to pay $1 per year, but this is about principles, >not money. I cannot accept that somebody else dictates how my software >is distributed and the conditions for its use. "Dictates" is really a very strong word. Unless you place software you purchase on websites and make it free for the world to download once you buy it, you ARE abiding by terms someone else is already "dictating" to you (that is, you cannot make unauthorized copies of software, and give them away, or sell them.) So, the $1 is about principle as well. Either you value the research already undertaken to make this game interesting, or you do not. No one is being forced to write a Gothic Chess program. But there will be Gothic Chess programing competitions (Dr. Schaeffer of the University of Alberta has already posted such a challenge to the students to create one) and there will be an interesting parallel that we have already observed in the chess programming community. My investors have agreed to put up $10,000 to the winner of the 2004 Gothic Chess Computer Championship. As far as I know, there is no equivalent even in the chess world. Do you think this will be recovered by $1 licensing fees? No, of course not. The point is, this will be fun for those who come out to play their software in a field where chess programming talent will reign supreme. There are no crutches in Gothic Chess. No 200 years of recorded history, no Grandmasters knowledgeable in opening theory, no tablebases computed. Raw talent. > >You ask Michel to write his engine first, and only then worry about >the legal and commercial issues. Do you really expect people to >engage in such a non-trivial programming task without even knowing >for sure what they are allowed to do with the finished program? > No, of course not. I also answered his post which will answer your question. To reiterate, no, I do not expect every user of the Gothic Chess programs eveyone else writes to send me $1. If the programs will be given away, I am asking for the creators to just pay the fee, acknowledge that there is a patent on this game, that I am its inventor, GothicChess.org is our website, and that is all there is to it.
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