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Subject: Re: Off-topic ramble on free software

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 22:43:05 11/12/98

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On November 12, 1998 at 21:51:18, Dave Gomboc wrote:

>1) Are you still planning to make Ferret a commercial product?
>2) Will it happen in time for Christmas? (I'd guess no. :)

Yes, but I'm also planning on a big long trip, but I'm probably not going to do
it until next century.

It takes a lot of energy to build a chess engine, but it's the kind of thing
that is really fun to do, so you don't notice so much.

Building an interface takes a lot of energy and in my case is more noticeable.

Chess programs are doing what D&D programs did some years ago.  It used to be
that someone could write a D&D program program in their own house, you devised a
combat system, a few monsters, a few items, maybe a plot, and stuck in some
graphics if you felt like it, and you were done.  Now you look at the credits
and there are fifty people listed in the manual someplace, the thing has amazing
sound and everything is animated.

It's really hard to imagine competing with these newer chess products that have
so many features and so much gloss.

I have a mock-up that I think is really cool, or at least is really cool now.
By the time I ever build a product based upon that, it will probably just look
dumb.

bruce



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