Author: Cornelius Smeg
Date: 04:42:57 03/17/04
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On March 16, 2004 at 13:40:24, Thorsten Czub wrote: >On March 16, 2004 at 12:55:35, Tord Romstad wrote: > >>It is not so easy, I'm afraid. I think Chris sold the rights to his engine, >>and his permission is no longer enough. >> >>There is a big risk that all hope is lost. :-( >> >>Tord > >when the company he sold it to (purple soft) is now bancrott, who has the rights >? >the programmer ? > >whatever. they or he or whoever has the rights. And i have the source code :-)) When Purple went bankrupt early last year it would have been possible to purchase back the entire caboodle for 1.5% of what they paid for it. I turned down the 'opportunity' and instead a small group of former employees (the technical ones) of Oxford Softworks and Purple took over the sources and company technical material. They now make some sort of a living doing development work and licencing. One of the directors of the new company is an accomplished AI programmer of many years experience, so he could work on the above chess material if he so wished. As to Thorsten 'having the source code'. He does not have recent source codes (from 1996 on?) since a different backup system came into operation. Thorsten was asked at the time of sale of Oxford Softworks if he still had any old sources. He replied no. He was asked and signed an email stating that he had no sources in his possession and had destroyed anything that he had in the past. This document was revealed to the purchasers and they were satisfied. Chess System Tal was not a particularly important component of the sale since it was too large and unwieldy to be used as a mobile phone game (the main objective of the purchasing consortium) and its development was ceased without its programmer working any further. However, I'm sure the consortium of lawyers, accountants and venture capitalists would be only to pleased to try and recoup some of their lost millions by legal action on any delinquent use or distribution of their then property. The same goes for the current owners, no doubt.
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