Author: KarinsDad
Date: 22:58:10 03/25/99
Go up one level in this thread
On March 25, 1999 at 23:16:18, David Dawson wrote: >I'm missing something here.. > > If some jerk wants to distribute modified binaries of crafty 16.6, what's >going to prevent him from changing the version number and continuing his assault >on future versions of crafty? After all, he's got the source already... > > Seems to me the only people this is hurting are those who don't yet know >about crafty... Plus, with the number of people requesting passwords to the ftp >site, how can they be monitored? If just one person posts the source, or emails >it to a few others.. hasn't all been lost? > >DD David, I will not pretend to answer for Robert, but my take on it is that the versions out there today are going to be obsolete eventually. It is one thing to take a chess program and tweak some evaluation parameters, but it is another to keep it current with the industry when you did not write it in the first place. Robert, on the other hand, will be keeping it current if he continues working on it (and after all of these years, I doubt that he will be stopping anytime soon). A chess program is like a finely tuned race car. The cars from 15 years ago could not touch the ones from today and the ones from 30 years ago could not touch the ones from 15 years ago. Since computer programs have a much faster turnaround time as compared to race cars, it is likely that Crafty 18.0 will be 100 to 200 points stronger than version 16.6 and people will be able to tell the difference. As for people requesting the new versions, there are several ways to control this such that any distributed version can be tracked back to the original person who requested it. With this type of security and a legal agreement which states that legal action will be taken if this is illegally distributed, would you want to be the first one to take that chance? Another idea is to not distribute the source at all. Instead, just distribute pseudo code and/or comments. Just my opinion on two ways to handle the situation. There are probably better ways. KarinsDad :)
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.