Author: Gian-Carlo Pascutto
Date: 10:01:14 03/21/00
Go up one level in this thread
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" >? Probably never. Even though you may spend hours of work on it and in the end most of the code will be yours, your project will always be based on a foundation. It would be wrong not to acknowledge that. The foundation may have been inferior to your own work, but it was an important part of the development of the program. [snip] > >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]". You might want to ask yourself: does the program NEED a different name ? The idea of Open Source is to work together on an improved program. Some people that are in computerchess do not seem to get that idea. They rip off the program, tweak it a little, call it their own, and close-source it again. Uh! What is it with all the name-changing ? It's all about MINE MINE MINE. Your own post even illustrates this: When can I call it MY program. I'm not trying to say there is anything wrong with having a competitive element. But if it's that what you are interested in, Open Sourcing the program (I assume you're actually talking about GPL'ed software ?) is definetely NOT the way to go. So if a program is GPL'ed, you can assume the original authors intent was to share knowledge and work towards better software, not boast his programming performances. Although the GPL itself does not prevent you from cloning it, doing so is (IMVHO) morally wrong. -- GCP
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.