OpenChess

Now that Houdini 2 is commercially available, how long would it take for Osipov to release the complete Houdini source to the public ? I am counting the seconds....

Damir Desevac wrote:Now that Houdini 2 is commercially available, how long would it take for Osipov to release the complete Houdini source to the public ? I am counting the seconds....

I am not going to release the Houdini sources.

Even though it is commercial now, and based on free open source Robbolito ?

I thought you were honorable and had some sense of decency even though others don't....

Damir Desevac wrote:Even though it is commercial now, and based on free open source Robbolito ?

Damir Desevac wrote:I thought you were honorable and had some sense of decency even though others don't....

Looks like you are actually implying that Robbo authors are just idiots which didn't realize what they were doing when they released Robbo as a public domain engine. I don't think so. And I'm pretty sure they knew that a strong commercial engine based on Robbo was likely to appear. So there's nothing wrong with Houdini now .

Nothing wrong in making money on open source engine ? Let's just wait and see how many of such engines are going to be besides Houdini... When authors see there is money on making engines based on open source...

Damir Desevac wrote:Nothing wrong in making money on open source engine ?

Making money on an improved open source engine . Quite a different thing in fact.
And it's not an easy task to boost Robbo's strength up by 60+ ELO.

Where do you draw the line ThinkingALot? Is it okay to close the source and sell the program if it's improved only 45 elo? What about 30? What about 5?

There's a line somewhere, but it's a subjective line.

Uly wrote:Where do you draw the line ThinkingALot? Is it okay to close the source and sell the program if it's improved only 45 elo? What about 30? What about 5?

It's OK in any case if it takes significant effort to improve the program. Even by 5 ELO if such an improvement is followed by addition of new features. And I think it's quite natural to charge money for one's work. Buying such a derivative you don't pay money for the original engine. You are paying just for the improvement.

Moreover, I believe that when someone releases an engine as a public domain project it's a kind of invitation "feel free to improve it and make it commercial"! Since nothing prevented the original authors to place a restriction on commercial use of their code.

Uly wrote:There's a line somewhere, but it's a subjective line.

I guess from the legal point of view there's no line at all: anyone can take, say, the latest Ivanhoe sources, rename the program to supermegaengine and sell it for 500 euro a copy .

ThinkingALot wrote:I guess from the legal point of view there's no line at all: anyone can take, say, the latest Ivanhoe sources, rename the program to supermegaengine and sell it for 500 euro a copy .

Yeah, let's do all immoral things not punished by law.