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Subject: Re: Make a CD of Winboard and all known engines, and sell it...

Author: Pete Galati

Date: 03:43:09 04/18/00

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On April 18, 2000 at 06:01:25, Michael Cummings wrote:

>On April 18, 2000 at 01:39:23, Roger D Davis wrote:
>
>>Perhaps someone should write an automatic install for Winboard and the latest
>>versions of all known engines and their opening books, and offer it for sale on
>>the net, with a large portion of the profits, if any, going to Tim Mann and the
>>engine authors.
>>
>>This could really boost Winboard Chess up another notch, would provide incentive
>>for aspiring authors, and would benefit all of us.
>>
>>Roger
>
>And how much would one sell this for. I do not think the demand would be high,
>and when you worked out the percentage the person making and distributing this
>would make, and then worl out the shares for the rest, it would come to very
>little profit.
>
>Maybe Since Crafty is strong and most people use that, you would get a situation
>where one programmer wants more, cause people would buy it to use say crafty
>more. or Many Tim Mann would want the lions share of the profits, but then the
>chess programmers would say, well without our programs your program would be
>nothing.
>
>All this potential hassle when you can goto many sites and download then all at
>the same site anyway.
>
>Freeware then turns into shareware of a sort.
>
>Enterprising idea though, sure someone will probably try it

I would be ideal for people who don't have internet access, I didn't have it
until (I don't remember exactly when), and because of that anything that was
bigger than a floppy disc, I couldn't get it home from the library, for example
Winboard, Comet, Crafty's opening book, Arasan... the list goes on.

So while I want to say I don't think that this CD-rom should happen because
there's too much potential for arguements, there is that side of me that wishes
that such a CD did exist a couple of years ago.

Ok, but let me add to the reasons that this shouldn't happen:

All of these programs change too often.  If the begening programmers are not
_allready_ inspired to write a Chess program, then I _don't_ want the program
that they were inspired to write because money was involved.  All of the best
programs are free, that is the shareware programs are not much good, they're not
as strong as the freeware, and they're not good enough to use as replacements
for the commercial programs, they're a very bad deal.

I don't care for the idea of money being involved, if it is, maybe the profits
should go to the GNU organazation, but certainly not to the program's authors,
they should be doing it because they want to be doing it.

Pete



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