Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 09:10:35 01/07/04
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On January 07, 2004 at 11:31:39, Ed Trice wrote: >On January 07, 2004 at 11:12:07, Michel Langeveld wrote: > >> >>Can I give for $1 Gothic chess programs away that I made or does everybody who >>download it then and wants to play with also have to pay also $1 to you? >> >>Michel > >Michel, > >Why don't you create your program first, this will take a little longer than you >might expect. I can make your program available for downloading from my site so >that people will know it is "officially" licensed. > >Would that be OK with you? You can also have it for download from your site when >the time comes and you have signed the licensing agreement. Ed, In another post you wrote that your intention with the patent and the $1 fee for releasing a free Gothic chess program was not to scare people away from the game. Unfortunately, I fear that it will still have the effect of scaring people away. I consider your game to be a very good one, and you also have some really impressive, interesting and well-researched stuff on your web pages. Being a chess variant enthusiast myself, it is quite possible that I would have added support for Gothic chess in my engine under different circumstances. But the presence of a patent, a 1$ fee, and the need for my engine to be officially licensed and available for download from somebody else's is completely unacceptable to me. I really don't want to be involved in any kind of legal or commercial issues, no matter how trivial. All I want is to create strategic game-playing programs and give them away to everybody who happen to find it fun to play against them. Of course I could afford to pay $1 per year, but this is about principles, not money. I cannot accept that somebody else dictates how my software is distributed and the conditions for its use. And like Uri, I frankly find the idea of having a patent for a chess-like game seems a bit silly. You ask Michel to write his engine first, and only then worry about the legal and commercial issues. Do you really expect people to engage in such a non-trivial programming task without even knowing for sure what they are allowed to do with the finished program? Tord
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