Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 20:53:14 01/16/06
Go up one level in this thread
On January 16, 2006 at 19:47:48, Uri Blass wrote: >On January 16, 2006 at 19:31:52, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On January 14, 2006 at 15:06:07, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote: >> >>>On January 14, 2006 at 13:57:40, Janosch Zwerensky wrote: >>> >>>>> I think, that >>>>>freeware chess programs are dumping the whole scene, killing any respect and >>>>>refund of creative programmers. So I am very demotivated and now about to start >>>>>with programming the game of Go instead of improving the SMIRF chess program. >> >>There are a lot of very strong freeware chess engines available: >>http://rwbc.volker-pittlik.name/chronology.htm >>The progress of chess engines seems to be accelerating, despite their presence. >>In fact, the recent trends seems to have provoked a large spike. Also an engine >>with that name. Ironic? Yes, but not nearly so ironic as missing the irony >>would have been. >> >>>>Note that one of the strongest presently existing Go programs (GnuGo) is open >>>>source and freeware. Hence, if you feel demotivated by the existence of strong >>>>free open sourced chess programs, I tend to doubt whether moving to Go >>>>programming will help. >>> >>>Hi Janosch, >>> >>>well it is a hard job not to be misunderstood. I think that having OpenSource >>>projects participate in brainsport events is unfair, when a lot of people try >>>to compete by joined power with the work of single individuals. In Chess such >>>projects have reached the playing strength of masters, in Go there is still >>>sufficient distance between top players and programs to have some hope left. >> >>It is also unfair to read the work of others from a book then? >>The effort of GnuGo is much more than that for any chess engine. Look at the >>size of the project. It is ten times the size of Crafty, easily. >>I expect that if you want to surpass the work of GnuGo, it will be much harder >>than surpassing the effort of Fruit, for instance. > > >size of the code does not tell you nothing about the difficulty to do something >better. > >chess programs beat humans easily when go programs cannot do it and it suggests >that there is more room for improvement in go and more chance for people with >original ideas to develop something better in go. > >It seems that in chess programs already walk in the right direction or something >close to it when in go people still did not find the right direction. > >> >>>And of course, a lot of people are very satisfied patchworking foreign code >>>pieces into a strong engine. Adding some percent of (hopefully) own thoughts >>>seems to allow them then, to join their name to that result. I am not inter- >>>ested in such a sort of 'programming'. Some days ago I read about the dog- >>>picture-easteregg in PHP. Why could it take that long to be detected by all >>>those OpenSource 'programmers'?. It seems, that most people merely are copying >>>instead of understanding. Hardly that should be the purpose of OpenSource. >> >>There are also people who learn from what others did and then took their own >>original ideas and succeeded. In fact, all of the startling discoveries came in >>this way (Ruffian, Fruit, Rybka spring to mind). >> >>I find the work of Tord to be original and interesting. His engine is open >>source. >> >>If you are not able to compete with your own ideas, and you do not want to study >>someone else's ideas, then probably chess programming competition is not a good >>area. >> >>>It might be the view of some freeware 'customers' always to have the best chess >>>program available, not worrying at all about the sources, which might have been >>>included. But that should not be the perspective of creative programmers. >> >>I wonder what that statement referrs to? There are not any professional egines >>that have stolen code from open source engines, in my opinion. >> >>Some projects are clearly clones like Toga and the other Fruit Spin-off >>GambitFruit. But that is allowed by the license, and these programs would not >>be allowed to compete in major competitions because of their clone status. >>Nevertheless, these excellent strong clone engines enable people with very >>little money like college students to get a world class chess engine for >>nothing. I would say that this is a good thing and not a bad one. > >This is bad news for the programmers who hope to make money from their program. I think you are wrong about this. I expect (for instance) that you will still buy an excellent chess engine even though there are also excellent free ones. If it were not for the excellent, free, open-source chess engines, would you have been keenly interested in writing one yourself? >They see that they have more material to learn in order to be competitive and >they feel that they have less chances to compete by some original ideas. Learing is fun, so I imagine learning more to be an advantage. I like to read new articles about chess programming and to go over the source code of someone's new program. Alpha-beta was a new idea at some point. If you can come up with something just as revolutionary, you will rule the chess world. If you can make a chess program that examines the same good chess nodes as Rybka, Shredder and Fruit but that has a branching factor of 1.5 instead of 2.0, you will rule the chess world and nobody will even be able to compete with you. If a daunting challenge turns you away, then Tic-Tac-Toe is easier. If you are writing a chess program to get rich, I think it is utter foolishness. Most of the money in the world is tied up in bean-counting. Nobody cares about these chess engines than a few of us geeks. Maybe Johan de Konig got a lot of money from it, but that is lightning in a bottle. Not so easy to catch it without getting fried. IMO-YMMV. P.S. I do not want to discourage you, despite how I may sound negative to you. I just do not think: 1. There is an opportunity for vast wealth in connection with a new chess program (Chess products are for the most part very low sales items and with small price tags at that) And I just do not think: 2. Good free chess programs hurt the market for good professional ones (I believe that they enhance it, almost certainly). Now, someone may make a giant boatload of money from a chess program. But it will certainly be surprising to me. I see the serious chess software market as a small niche market. The mass-produced chess software market consists of exactly one entity: ChessMaster.
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