Author: Christos Gitsis
Date: 11:43:39 08/24/05
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On August 24, 2005 at 06:04:33, Frank Mueller wrote: >On August 24, 2005 at 04:10:36, Fabien Letouzey wrote: > >>There is also the insufficiency (IMO) of the GPL in the chess case that I have >>to ponder on (pun intended). > >I don't understand that. You deliberately decided to publish under GPL, thus all >consequences were/are conceivable. And publishing under GPL doesn't imply that >you -- as author of Fruit -- have to waive all your rights. > >Frank In June, when Fruit 2.1 was released, Shredder was undisputed number 1 and about 100 elo stronger than any free engine. Fritz, Junior, Hiarcs etc were also clearly stronger than the free engines (perhaps with the exception of Toga II 0.93). It was not conceivable to me at that time that two months later there would have appeared so many new strong engines that there is no knowing which one is the strongest. But this is the current situation, and it probably is not irrelevant to the prior release of Fruit 2.1. Obviously a program released under the GPL is vulnerable to people who take and don't give back (ideas). Not everyone is interested in sharing of ideas and progress of computer chess - some people are just interested in making their engine as strong as they can. And there is no way to know if the programmers of closed-source engines have taken ideas out of Fruit, which combined with their own ideas give them an advantage. All the above really give a lot to ponder on, and I can understand Fabien's decision. I would like to add that I am a fan of open-source software and a Linux user.
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