Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 22:45:48 01/07/05
Go up one level in this thread
On January 07, 2005 at 22:06:46, ERIQ wrote: >On January 07, 2005 at 16:36:10, Richard A. Fowell wrote: > >>On January 07, 2005 at 08:57:47, ERIQ wrote: >> >><snip> >>> >>>To date hiarcs, cm9000, deep sjeng and ruffian are the only commercial engines >>>available and two of the four are loosely supported at best ie. deep sjeng and >>>ruffian. Yet you make this list seem good ?! >> >>You are disappointed in a list that includes cm9000, deep sjeng and ruffian, >>and (soon now) a current version of HIARCS, and say "Yet you make this list seem >>good". >> >>How did you feel one year ago, when none of these engines were even prospective >>possibilities, and cm6000 and HIARCS 7 were the strongest chess programs on the >>Mac? >> >>Obviously, it isn't as nice as the list on the PC, and I would like to make it >>better. >>But it is heroicly better than it was a year ago. >> >>>Do you think mac and linux people would like to see other big names like: >>>shedder, fritz, junior, and chesstiger? >> >>Sure. >> >>I have been actively working for over a decade to make that list better, and if >>you want to do >>something constructive to help me with that, I would welcome it. There are lots >>of things >>that users can do to help improve the chess software on their platform. >> >>Be very clear on one thing, though - it isn't that the programmers are lazy, it >>is that the rewards for putting their engines into the Mac market have been >>poor. The Chessbase database was on the Mac market for a while, then they >>stopped. HIARCS was on the Mac market in the late 90s for two versions, and then >>stopped. Chess software on the Mac just didn't return enough money to be worth >>the effort. >> >>Even when HIARCS (late 1990s) has head and shoulders the strongest chess program >>available for the Macintosh, it didn't make enough money to justify the effort. >>And that was despite a lot of unpaid effort on my part to help HIARCS succeed, >>including very extensive beta testing, writing chess software review articles in >>Inside Mac games, the BMUG and LAMG newsletters, GambitSoft and elsewhere, >>writing and distributing an unofficial patch to enhance HIARCS, and benchmarking >>HIARCS Mac vs. HIARCS PC to show that (for that version of HIARCS) the Mac was a >>faster platform for HIARCS than it seemed. >> >>So - what can we do to make it attractive to port good chess engines to the Mac? >>The classic economic approach is to lower the cost of putting good software on >>the Mac, and increase the return. >> >>One way of lowering the cost is to provide Mac OS/X host software that will take >>care of the GUI issues, such as Jose. Jose (http://jose-chess.sourceforge.net/) >>supports both X-board and UCI protocols, and I conjecture this is part of the >>reason that Ruffian and Deep Sjeng are available as OS/X UCI engines currently. >>I think the current work on Sigma Chess to support HIARCS through a UCI >>interface will help encourage more chess engines there as well. >> >>Another way to lower the cost of putting good software on the Mac is for users >>to volunteer to provide high-quality, unpaid testing as beta testers. By >>high-quality, I mean thorough test coverage of program features, testing on >>multiple configurations, narrowing down problems to specific, repeatable >>scenarios, and providing constructive, implementable suggestions for >>improvement. I have been doing that on the Mac and Palm OS for many authors, but >>this is one direct way to help improve the quality of the product. Many of the >>things that I as a user wanted in a chess program exist in MacChess because of >>the time I spent with the author testing the program and making suggestions and >>other contributions (such as creating a piece set). >> >>Now lets talk about the return side. There are relatively few Mac owners, of >>whom relatively few buy chess software, of whom relatively few buy HIARCS-class >>software, of which a relatively small fraction of the proceeds go to the >>programmer. >> >>Although I have influenced a few purchases, I can't imagine I've made much of an >>impact on the number of Mac owners, though I have done things such as join >>Macintosh user groups, provide free Mac consulting, purchase Macs at my company, >>and provide CD-Rs filled with hand-picked quality freeware and shareware as >>Christmas presents to every Mac owner I knew. >> >>As far as the fraction of Mac users who actually buy chess software, and high >>quality chess software, at that, I've tried to influence this through publicity. >>This includes writing chess software reviews for such magazines as Inside Mac >>Games, the BMUG newsletter, the LAMG newsletter, and an article in the past year >>in some Mac magazine I don't remember. I also make sure the authors are aware of >>the opportunities for free publicity offered by the Macintosh software indices >>offered by Apple, Versiontracker and the like. >> >>The real high-leverage point though, is the fraction of the money going to the >>computer programmers. As indicated in another post in this thread, the fraction >>of the proceeds that the chess engine programmer gets through the classic >>software distribution model is relatively small. >> >>One radical approach to changing this (as I mentioned in the other message) >>would be to get a co-op effort to commission the port of a chess engine. That >>way the fraction of what you as a user pay goes to incentivize the chess engine >>programmer is much higher. >> >>So - what can you do to help change this situation? > > I can Let all programmers know that it would be more profitable to just make >engine as xboard and uci for all three major platforms winblows, palm, unix-like >systems (freebsd,linux and apple) and then distibute it themselfs via a webpage >keeping most of the profits. I for one would find no problem buying an engine >for $30 directly from an authors webpage and then downloading my favorite free >gui to play it with. What is so hard about this? I am sure they are not making >$30 an engine at the moment! >>-Richard You can't make that clear at all, because it isn't true. Only having an own interface sells well. Note that i just lost lawyer cost on palm. Had 2 courtcases about it thanks to Dan Corbitt's wise advice to someone to sue me.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.