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Subject: Re: Patriot was NOT strong enough to become commercial, since...........

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 04:01:51 03/31/04

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On March 31, 2004 at 06:15:05, Jorge Pichard wrote:

>Patriot was NOT strong enough to become commercial, since there are a lot of
>free engines such as: Aristarch 4.41, El Chinito 3.25, Smarthink 0.17a, and
>Delfi 4.4 that are much stronger. In order for a program to qualify as
>commercial it should be much better than the top Free engines available.

With risk of stating the obvious:  Every engine programmer is free to sell
his engine if he wants to do so.  Of course, the likelihood that a lot of
people will buy it depends to some extent on the playing strength.

Saying that a program is not worth buying because there are free engines
of comparable or higher strength is also too simple.  There are many other
important factors here.  From a commercial engine you expect the software
to be more polished and less buggy, and to have a richer set of features.
You are also more likely to get support from the developer.

I would even claim that strength is relatively unimportant to the average
user today.  Can you really notice the difference in playing strength
between Phalanx and Shredder when you play against them?

Tord



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