Author: Mridul Muralidharan
Date: 23:11:02 05/05/05
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On May 05, 2005 at 18:15:34, Dan Honeycutt wrote: >On May 05, 2005 at 16:51:15, Mridul Muralidharan wrote: > >[snip] >> >>This is one of the prime reasons why I dont want to write a open source chess >>engine (I support open source devel in all other fields) or release binaries of >>my engine. > >Hi Mridul: > >I concur with most of what you say, but I fail to follow this last point. If >you write an open source program that is proof positive that it is not a clone >(or that it is). If someone else clones your program that's not your headache. > >Best >Dan H. The point is the reverse ... two points actually that I can think of : 1) Now whenever there is accusation of someone cloning say crafty or fruit (and maybe pretty soon Todd's program too) , others - the original authors will get contacted to verify , there will be huge debates , etc. Major pain. Ofcourse , you can take the approach that I dont care if someone clones , etc - but I have not seen anyone sucessfully take that approach in comp chess world. In most other fields , the effort is sufficiently diverse/sparsely populated that you dont have any issues like this. Ex : you dont hear of someone cosmetically modifying gcc and claiming it to be his own creation :-D Chess is essentially individually do-able , small enough and yet challengine enough : and a well written bug-free program can easily become very strong. (Never mind why mine are always weak ... not well written enough , not bug free enough , and I am usully trying out crazy ideas :) ) 2) If you take a I dont care approach , a hard working programmer who is learning the ropes will get disillusioned when his creation gets beaten up by clones of open source programs. Ofcourse , he wont know they are clones initially ! Kind of demotivates him ... I have personally seen this happen time and again. And I dont really understand the need for open source chess programs ... what really is the problem they are tackling if their license is not free enough ? The algo's are there and pretty much standards , amazingly helpful developer community , excellent archives for learning stuff , really helpful tutorials (which include complete programs in some cases) - I dont understand what is the problem that really strong open source chess programs are solving or the need for them in the first place. (unless you take the I dont care approach ... which has its own pitfalls). Also you should remember that if I enter my program in a tourny , and a better compiled (and maybe better tuned ;) ) version of my own program enters the same tourny under a different name and beats the living crap out of my program , I wont be too happy :) Bottomline is , all this clone accusations and counter-accusations are what is sickening. Early morning rambling ;) Sorry Mridul
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