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I am having a blast with the two free iphone Chess Apps I recently installed, "Chess with friends" and "Chess Lite" by "99 Games" (with sjeng engine). How about a Crafty port, or even better, rybka for iphone?

I did pay for it gladly, as long as it has such a nice interface like "chess lite". Chess genius has an iphone app too - but haven't tried it yet.

I have Chess Genius and it's very nice. You can't go wrong for $10. I highly recommend it.

I also have Caissa Chess, which is a good program, but not nearly as strong as Chess Genius. I'll probably get tChess Pro (by Tom Kerrigan), too.

pavel wrote:I am having a blast with the two free iphone Chess Apps I recently installed, "Chess with friends" and "Chess Lite" by "99 Games" (with sjeng engine). How about a Crafty port, or even better, rybka for iphone?

I did pay for it gladly, as long as it has such a nice interface like "chess lite". Chess genius has an iphone app too - but haven't tried it yet.

I chatted with GCP in Leiden about the Sjeng that is released for iphone. It is released without his permission. It is an old free Sjeng but the release violates the GPL.

Yes, I will probably buy chess genius next. But I will not buy more than one commercial chess apps, unless it provides considerably difference and features. I loose to all them anyways.

Harvey Williamson wrote:

pavel wrote:I am having a blast with the two free iphone Chess Apps I recently installed, "Chess with friends" and "Chess Lite" by "99 Games" (with sjeng engine). How about a Crafty port, or even better, rybka for iphone?

I did pay for it gladly, as long as it has such a nice interface like "chess lite". Chess genius has an iphone app too - but haven't tried it yet.

I chatted with GCP in Leiden about the Sjeng that is released for iphone. It is released without his permission. It is an old free Sjeng but the release violates the GPL.

They do provide the source for free on their site, (not on iphone, because you can't view/edit/compile source on iphone). They provide credit for the original project and the are making money on the "interface" not the engine itself. Which is not against the GPL AFAIK, or all commercial Linux distribution would be breaking some law.

The only GPL it breaks (again I am not 100% sure) is that they didn't explicitly ask for the authors permission before releasing it.

pavel wrote: I loose to all them anyways.

That's why I don't really need a very strong engine. I actually play games against the programs on the iPhone (on the lower levels), but never against programs on my computer. That's for analysis only.

The only GPL it breaks (again I am not 100% sure) is that they didn't explicitly ask for the authors permission before releasing it.

I fear you cannot legally run GPL'ed code on a (non jailbroken) iPhone. The code would not be freely modifiable as the modifier have to get a new license from Apple, sign an NDA etc...

The only way to have GPL'ed code on the iPhone is for the copyright holders to provide a GPL exception. Since apparently this did not happen in this case, I think this would be genuinly a GPL violation.

pavel wrote:

Harvey Williamson wrote:

pavel wrote:I am having a blast with the two free iphone Chess Apps I recently installed, "Chess with friends" and "Chess Lite" by "99 Games" (with sjeng engine). How about a Crafty port, or even better, rybka for iphone?

I did pay for it gladly, as long as it has such a nice interface like "chess lite". Chess genius has an iphone app too - but haven't tried it yet.

I chatted with GCP in Leiden about the Sjeng that is released for iphone. It is released without his permission. It is an old free Sjeng but the release violates the GPL.

They do provide the source for free on their site, (not on iphone, because you can't view/edit/compile source on iphone). They provide credit for the original project and the are making money on the "interface" not the engine itself. Which is not against the GPL AFAIK, or all commercial Linux distribution would be breaking some law.

The only GPL it breaks (again I am not 100% sure) is that they didn't explicitly ask for the authors permission before releasing it.

They maybe making money only on the interface but are people buying it only because it comes with Sjeng!?

Harvey Williamson wrote:

pavel wrote:

Harvey Williamson wrote:

pavel wrote:I am having a blast with the two free iphone Chess Apps I recently installed, "Chess with friends" and "Chess Lite" by "99 Games" (with sjeng engine). How about a Crafty port, or even better, rybka for iphone?

I did pay for it gladly, as long as it has such a nice interface like "chess lite". Chess genius has an iphone app too - but haven't tried it yet.

I chatted with GCP in Leiden about the Sjeng that is released for iphone. It is released without his permission. It is an old free Sjeng but the release violates the GPL.

They do provide the source for free on their site, (not on iphone, because you can't view/edit/compile source on iphone). They provide credit for the original project and the are making money on the "interface" not the engine itself. Which is not against the GPL AFAIK, or all commercial Linux distribution would be breaking some law.

The only GPL it breaks (again I am not 100% sure) is that they didn't explicitly ask for the authors permission before releasing it.

They maybe making money only on the interface but are people buying it only because it comes with Sjeng!?

I really doubt most iphone chess app users really know or care what sjeng is, or that the engine is a separate process from the interface or whether the source is available for download; because you wouldn't be able to modify the source on an iphone without having to go through app store. [ pay a hefty price and subject to approval ]

Personally I used it because of the interface, its very very very well designed, compare to others I have seen and I couldn't care less what engine it uses because I loose to all of them anyways. I didn't even know the engine was sjeng, until after I installed it.

IMO, asking for permission of the author is just a formality. If you couldn't care enough to have your project open source and have the whole world modify it and distribute it to their heart's content. Why should "asking before using it" be such a big deal?

If you couldn't care enough to have your project open source and have the whole world modify it and distribute it to their heart's content. Why should "asking before using it" be such a big deal?

That's precisely the point. Software for a non jailbroken iPhone is not freely modifiable. Read my post above. If you release something as open source you DO care how it is used.

EDIT: I also do not accept you claim that it is interface that matters and not the chess program. Writing an interface is easy for an experienced programmer but writing a good chess program from scratch is extremely difficult.