On being free and all that sort of stuff...

[Roger Brown]

Hello all,

I read with a sense of despair the petulant demands that this or that author release (at the minimum) their executable for the free enjoyment of all.

This is distressing to me because I believe that we are missing a the golden forest for the trees. I believe that we are in a golden age of computerchess. It was only a few years ago that the competitive free engine standard was Crafty and Yace, two of my favourite engines of all time.

Then the landscape exploded with the advent of Ruffian (yes I know that my chronology is a severe distortion but this is not a historical essay on computerchess developments) and we had a program that was free that was also ready to climb into the ring with the big boys.

I guess that did it.....

I say that because now we are blase about Fruit and Zappa. We now expect the free stuff to be UCI and Winboard compliant (actually with the invention of polyglot, another piece of genius taken for granted in my opinion, the necessity to be both disappears). We now expect the free stuff to be competitive with the commercial products, the authors of which can learn from the freely available engines but not so much the other way.

We now expect the free stuff.

Why?

What right do we have to another person's intellectual creations?

What right do we have to get it?

NONE.

Now before someone starts to wonder, please put me in the line for the free stuff. I am a huge fan of the free stuff. I want the latest engine and I want it to be better than the previous version and I want clear readme files in each one and I want it to be useable in all interfaces flawlessly and I want it to to tell me that it has found its book and the six man TB's......and I want it now.

Wow.

Whatever happens, I have been fortunate to have witnessed a free (let us not say professional because anyone looking at Crafty's or Yace's feature set cannot help but realise that they are professionally done) engine explosion that has made sure that the box cannot go back to the size it was.

Deal with it.

As much as they will never acknowledge it, the authors of Yace, Crafty, Ruffian, Fruit and Zappa have taken us to somewhere else, somewhere remarkable.

I cannot imagine what comes next.

I get tingly thinking about it.

I would just like to see some more courtesy and acknowledgement, not just for performance (which is to be given, make no mistake) but also for the spirit of generosity that allowed us to share in the wonder of a creative mind.

It still makes me shake my head when I look over at ProDeo (and the last freely released DOS version of Rebel which I enjoy using!) and realise that its author gave us that for free.

I am speechless with gratitude. Perhaps that is why I wrote this, to share with you the possibility that perhaps we have been taking far too much for granted.

Ah well, that is just my rambling thought on it.....

You were warned though.

Later.

[Dann Corbit]

Some people are angry because the roses have thorny bushes on them.
Other people are happy because the thorny bushes have roses on them.

You can't please everybody because some people cannot be pleased at any cost.

[Roman Hartmann]

Doesn't sound like rambling to me. Makes sense imo and I happen to agree with your statements.
Even the few freeware engines you mention are well chosen and if I had to compile a list with some of the most important (freeware) engines for computerchess they would be all on my list (I would add Gnuchess to that list as well though).

Roman

[Roger Brown]

Doesn't sound like rambling to me. Makes sense imo and I happen to agree with your statements.
Even the few freeware engines you mention are well chosen and if I had to compile a list with some of the most important (freeware) engines for computerchess they would be all on my list (I would add Gnuchess to that list as well though).

Roman

Hello Roman,

I am flattered that yourself and Dann took time out to read my ramblings...

I should not have left out Gnuchess at all. I plead artistic license!

Thanks for your comments.

Later.