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Subject: Speculations about new engines - skip skip if you want to buy a program

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 07:28:20 06/22/99

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On June 19, 1999 at 15:27:47, Fernando Villegas wrote:

>Hi all:
>A friend of mine in Europe has just told to me that people from chessbase is
>already making - or they will very soon: he was not very clear in that- some
>contacts with Bruce in order to get Ferret as another engine for Chessbase.
>Imagine if that earssay result to be truth...
>Fernando

I get those questions also a lot. Bruce must get them every day.

One thing i completely am missing. Why would one sell something using
friedel or weiner. They are NOT doing things for free.

They need to live from something and it's in their interest that your
program gets copied a lot!

Let's do some calculation. If you are an engine of fritz/chessbase or
engine from genius6/millennium chess system then

a) your engine is a small DLL out of the big part and can be copied
   easily

b) you don't have an own face

c) if you sell one engine then you receive a small part from what
   the program sells for.

d) the motherprogram is "most" important so you get paid something little
   for every engine sold, where normally you would get like 4 times more
   for a single sold version of your program

e) after you are an engine it's tough to start your own program because
    a) you got lazy and have a disadvantage in time producing your own
       windows interface
    b) you might have signed a contract that doesn't allow you to sell your
       own program. They first try you to sign this i assume before they
       tell you it's not needed
    c) people think you are an engine and will become again an engine,
       so your name is ruined
    d) years before your engine comes out in a certain magazine
       they write that your program is gonna get an engine within
       a few months (although you agreed they would not do this),
       so your sales of the normal program gets hurt awfully.
    e) i don't doubt the honesty of Friedel and Weiner, but i hear big
       rumours about some programs with engines, where the programmers
       of the engines get paid very slowly and have tough problems to
       check how many engines are in fact sold, and when they get paid
       they initially only receive a small part of what they expected
       to get paid.

Anything written above might be based upon pure speculation by me.

Greetings,
Vincent






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