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Subject: Re: chessbase is selling free engines

Author: Mike Byrne

Date: 07:44:23 07/25/04

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On July 25, 2004 at 06:26:14, Uri Blass wrote:

>I was surprised to see that all the cheap engines that chessbase is selling are
>free engines.
>
>I was also surprised that they sell old version of Sos from march 2000 but maybe
>they believe that customers that buy engines instead of downloading them
>deserve to get a worse version
>
>See http://www.chessbase.com/shop/index.asp?cat=Engines+direct&user=&coin=
>
>I wonder if the authors also earn money from it.
>If few people want to support programmers by buying free programs because they
>feel uncomfortable with downloading them when the author gets nothing from it
>then there is no problem with it but I expect honest company to tell the
>customers that the things that they buy are free to download and if they buy
>them then it is only if they want to give some support to the programmers.
>
>Some more questions:
>1)Can We say that Sos and crazyBishop are professional engines because they are
>sold by chessbase and does it mean that the authors needed to pay 500$
>registration fee to participate in WCCC?
>
>2)Does chessbase need permission of the author in order to sell free engines or
>maybe they can decide tommorow to sell Crafty?
>
>Uri

1.  The engines being sold are about 4 years old - no updates since initial
release.

2.   The are chessbase native engines and they only work in Chessbase GUI.  At
the time, Fritz 7 was not supporting UCI engines, current Fritz GUI supports UCI
engines.

3.  In the "old" Olympic definition, the programmers were paid and thus
professional - but the authors are clearly not making their living by their
chess programming - so I'm ok with still calling them amatuers.

4.  There are really no rules with respect to your question - so anyone group
can interpert the facts as they see them.  There is also no chess programming
oversight body to enforce the rules = so Chessbase sets (interperts) the rules
as they see them, the ICCC as they see them, the SSDF as they see etc etc.   I
guess you say with chess programming - it is still the wild wild  west.  Did we
ever see the alledged crafty clone code from List.  I'm still waiting for that
one.



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