It happended to be the first non-commercial engine I installed on one of my computer. As an OTB player, I only had played with my version if Fritz 8 before (Fritz was highly popular among OTB player then).
For some reason, I had to search for information about Fritz that I just bought and I ended up on a post at CCC entitled something like "A freeware at the top!" I could barely believe such a thing existed and that I never heard of. That was Fruit! 15 years already.
Free engines plays like half-gods now. Year after year, I always wonder if computer chess will lose interest and all engines games will end up draws. Not yet! I find myself very lucky to able to watch games on demand played by such great players.
Yeah, check out the free Rodent engine, which is focused on creating players with interesting playstyles so you don't even need to use other engines for this.
( see the readme file: http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/Fruit.html )
