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Subject: Re: At what point is it YOUR program ?

Author: Jay Rinde

Date: 07:34:01 03/21/00

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On March 21, 2000 at 10:23:34, Georg v. Zimmermann wrote:

>Hi,
>
>If you started "serious" chess programming by modifying an Open Source program,
>spending countless hours, at what point can you honestly speak of "YOUR program"
>?
>
>In my case I rewrote the complete evaluation function, I changed the piece
>values drastically and added / changed some of the extensions and rewrote the
>time-handling routine + minor things.
>
>But 95% of the code is still the original, since I didn't feel like inventing
>the wheel so no changes to basic alpha-beta or move-generation routines or
>winboard connection.
>
>My finger notes on Fics say that the program is "[original program] with changes
>in ...", I would like to call it "[my program], based on [original program]".
>
>Do you think that is ok ? What is your opinion ? At what point can you give it
>an own name and don't have to speak of a "modified xyz" anymore ?
>
>Regards,
>Georg v. Zimmermann

This may not be a good example, but....  Let's say you wanted to translate the
Bible but since the King James version was so good you decided just to do
original translation of about the 5 per cent you thought needed clarity. Now,
could you say it was your translation or just a modification? As I said, I don't
know whether this is a good example but, then..... Jay



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