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Subject: Re: Chess System Tal II for Windows.

Author: Roger D Davis

Date: 13:18:26 04/08/99

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On April 08, 1999 at 12:58:36, Dave Gomboc wrote:

>On April 08, 1999 at 11:40:28, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On April 08, 1999 at 06:42:03, Didzis Cirulis wrote:
>>
>>>* Maybe someone could post the games of this program, at least some 10?
>>>
>>>* Maybe there is a computer account for this program on FICS or ICS?
>>>
>>>Didzis Cirulis
>>
>>I have seen somewhere (here I guess) that people are not allowed to publish
>>games or even results of comp-comp games against CSTal.
>>
>>
>>    Christophe
>
>They were even more careful.  They say "game sequences", so you can't just pick
>an arbitrary position, and play 10 moves showing how well/poorly it plays from
>that position.
>
>I wonder how many consecutive positions constitutes a "game sequence"?  Two?
>One? :-) .... :-(
>
>Frankly, I think the restriction is overly severe, but software developers can
>choose their license terms.  People tend not to purchase products with licenses
>that they don't like. <shrug>  Oxford is not the first company to refuse to
>allow computer-computer result reporting, and at least Chris has takes some time
>to justify it on his web site, so we know that this is a conscious decision,
>instead of some utter stupidity (for the latter, refer to the license for
>Borland Pascal 7.0).
>
>Dave Gomboc

I haven't read the license agreement, but I did read the above from the CSTal
site. Seems to me, though, that you should be able to publish a single game,
since a single game is not a sequence of games.

As for publishing a list of 10 moves, that would be a "move sequence," right? So
that would be publishable.

My interpretation is that Chris wanted to prohibit people from getting lost in
playing hundreds of games with the autoplayer and then publishing them, since he
regards computer-computer games against "materialistic programs" a misguided
effort.

So perhaps publishing a single game, or the move sequence from a single game, is
permissible under the licensing agreement. Otherwise, seems that he would have
just said "Nothing that CSTal II plays can ever be published," and just left it
at that...something simple and total, since Chris is a pretty straightforward
guy.

But who knows.

Roger






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