Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 20:45:11 11/01/98
Go up one level in this thread
On November 01, 1998 at 12:46:19, Moritz Berger wrote:
>On November 01, 1998 at 11:51:01, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>You know what is my worse nightmare? That Microsoft releases a serious chess
>>program. And you know how they will do it: they will take the best programs,
>>disassemble them, and steal the algorithms to build their own program.
>
>... tough words ...
>
>> Of course
>>you know that they have already done this with the Stacker Disk Compression
>>Utility. Don't you remember? The result is the "Microsoft" Dos and Windows disk
>>compression utility. They could do the same with chess programs.
>
>Don't you remember? There was a settlement which earned Stac some money (AFAIR
>$100 million?) and lead to incorporation of their technology into the products
>you mentioned. So I doubt you have a "legal" ground to accuse Microsoft of
>"theft".
Take a look at Amir's post and at my reply. Microsoft was sentenced to a $26
million fine because they had stolen parts of Stac's technology.
>Also, Microsoft employs more than 20.000 people world wide, while ChessBase
>headcount is probably less than 20 (I didn't bother to count them,
>www.chessbase.com has more details about every employee). Quite a different
>order of magnitude ...
You are right, fortunately ChessBase is not Microsoft.
>>The result would of course be a good program. Would you call this a "wonderful
>>development for consumers" ?
>>
>>For the community of chess programmers, this would be the *last* development.
>
>There already is a "Microsoft-like" chessprogram: The Chessmaster series, which
>is the only chess related product to qualify for comparison with Microsoft if
>you take market share, shelf presence and brand recognition into account.
>
>Despite Chessmaster, other programs have managed to survive. 4 million copies of
>Chessmaster sold, maybe 40.000 copies of Fritz 5 (?) from the alleged monopolist
>ChessBase; again: a 100x difference (even more striking if you also take e.g.
>the >400.000 copies of chess programs by Ed Schröder into account, see
>www.rebel.nl from where I got this number).
OK.
Next time I'll aim my gun at Mindscape. :)
But I still don't see the major chess engines going into Fritz shell as a nice
developpment.
Christophe
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