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Subject: Re: Toga with tablebases support

Author: Greg Simpson

Date: 12:56:34 10/30/05

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On October 30, 2005 at 14:24:02, Premraj Natarajan wrote:

>Will there be Toga with Tablebases support like Fruit 2.2.1 ?

Probably not soon, if at all.

The code to access the compressed tablebases has been made available for free to
anyone who asked for it, but it is not licensed in a way compatible with the
Toga's GPL license.  There are some ways it could happen, for instance:

1: The author of the tablebase access code could release it under the GPL as an
additional license.  I don't know if he has been asked, but since he hasn't done
so on his own, it doesn't seem too likely.

2: Write a new routine under the GPL to access the tablebases.  This is
difficult, and no one seems inclined to do it.  There might be legal obstacles
as well, though I haven't heard of any.

3: The current tablebases have some problems, in particular in distinguishing
lines that lead to a draw under the 50 move rule from wins.  Ideally, a whole
new set of tablebases and access routines should be written to avoid these
issues.  I don't think anyone is going to do this just for Toga, and actually a
commercial implementation seems more likely to me than a free one.

I don't mean to sound like an expert on the issue: I'm not.  I may be mistaken
on some of the details here, but the general idea is that currently it is more
difficult to implement tablebases in a GPL program like Toga.



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