Author: Bertil Eklund
Date: 09:21:58 04/19/01
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>Probably. They do not have their own interface so they have little >chance of selling otherwise. > >I do not know what Weiner offers but i do not even want to know it, >it's going to be very little probably. > >What chessbase offers is a peanut of course. You can only get great programs >when programmers can fulltime work at it. Programmers earn when >working in a company around 50k$ to 100k$ if living in USA >a year if they're good. To make a chess >program strong you are a good programmer anyway, very little people can >make a chessprogram anyway. > >When Friedel talked about diep as engine under chessbase (that's >quite some time ago so i do not know whether they pay more nowadays, >but as far as i heart not a penny more) he was talking about 5000 or 10000 >dmark, about 4000 us$ today (dollar is high now). > >Considering the thousands of hours work that are put in an engine on >average, that's like 1 us$ an hour. > >So from that i can't even internet as i pay a dollar an hour for >internet already. > >I'm not sure how many countries there are on this world where a >programmer earns 1us$ an hour. Add to that that the sales of an engine >are probably (my own estimate) like 1/100 of what fritz sells >as it's so easy to copy a few unprotected .dll and .eng files >(whereas the fritz engine if loaded always begs for cdrom here, >then i must locate that cdrom first etc, in short why is fritz >better protected anyway? More users use it so more trouble. More logical >would be to protect the programs and not fritz, unless is perhaps >has to do with smart marketing?). > >Now Weiner is not a hair better from business viewpoint i've heart >from rumours, i'll not write what i heart >about whether he pays programmers at all, but let's refer to the paper >i got at world champs 1999 from Ossi Weiner. There was stated that the best >'amateur' engine would get 20000 DMARK. Yet despite that many engines >are running under Ossi Weiner software i never have seen announcement on his >homepage who received that 20000 dmark... ...i don't need to mention that >Ossi never answerred some emails where i asked whether already an engine >was selected (i emailed in the year 2000) ...and even worse i didn't >hear a word from collegue programmers. > >And sure for so much programming 20k isn't much... > >Amazingly many programmers keep accepting those low offers. How do you >compete with an easily copyable gambit tiger 2 (read my own definition >of what free is in this context) for chessbase? > >Note i do not know what they paid Christophe to spread a simplistic >copyable gambit tiger 2 engine. it is non of my business and i would >sure not post it here if i knew. > >But if Amir and Christophe got what i think they have gotten, then >i would fall laughing from my chair. > >Doing nothing in some kind of burocracy job with loads of sparetime >here probably earns already better... > >In the meantime the circle has again been completed as in the meantime >the interface of chessbase keeps improving... ...where f5.32 compared >to other games (non-chess) looked designed by a child, though having >a lot of functionality, nowadays the interface is really good. Hard >to make for *any* good graphics programmer. Not to mention a non-grpahics >programmer like me, Ban, Donninger, Theron and the list can go on. > >Then i still didn't talk about the problems of making a good commercial >interface for a chessprogram, as those words 'good commercial interface' >are completely different from pushing a few buttons in delphi or java. > >I'm still working on mine. It works cool now, but i have still loads >of work ahead as i can't of course release an interface which is having >similar functionality to interfaces of a few years ago! > >Add to that that the average chessprogrammer is very lazy and you know >they never are going to have their own interface, so the circle is >round and they get back to those who offered them a >peanut (from my viewpoint for the work invested). > >Now to my big surprise we get chessbase or chessbase against kramnik! > >Best regards, >Vincent Thank you Vincent for a very good and interesting post! Bertil
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