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I do not understand what advantage it gives to a developer to make his source code open source code. Perhaps if you stop developing and would have removed it anyway ?

Henk wrote:I do not understand what advantage it gives to a developer to make his source code open source code. Perhaps if you stop developing and would have removed it anyway ?

The same could be said the other way around: What advantage does it give to a developer to make his source code closed and proprietary?

Open source has two advantages: You can learn from the code of others and you can collaborate and contribute new code.

Codesquid wrote:

Henk wrote:I do not understand what advantage it gives to a developer to make his source code open source code. Perhaps if you stop developing and would have removed it anyway ?

The same could be said the other way around: What advantage does it give to a developer to make his source code closed and proprietary?

Open source has two advantages: You can learn from the code of others and you can collaborate and contribute new code.

But it gives a disadvantage to other developers who don't like to read code from others. It also gives a disadvantage to other developers who like to work on their own or want to be original.

But why would someone who opens his source care about other developers?

I have had various reasons for opening sources. Sometimes the source code is the primary product. A project like micro-Max would not be meaningful if the source was not public. It would just be another weak Chess engine.

Another reason would be to make the product acceptable for inclusion in Linux distros such as Debian, who do care a great deal about whether the source is closed or not. This was the main reason for opening the source code of HaChu.

In general I release the source in the public domain, in such cases. That makes it more generally useful as GPL'ed source, and more people will be using it in other projects.

1. Sometimes (rarely, but it happens) people send you bugfixes or new features.
2. Someone else (anyone, really) can compile it for platforms you don't have access to.

In my case it was

1) learning by emulation (code of Pablo Vazquez, author of Sungorus, was bug-free and much more readable than anything I could write)
2) starting from existing move generator and basic, but reasonable search was a big time-saver. I guess that in chess programming I prefer chess to programming Sungorus had almost no chess knowledge to speak of, so I could stick to what I like
3) Indeed I got several bugfixes and suggestions from other programmers

hgm wrote:But why would someone who opens his source care about other developers?

I have had various reasons for opening sources. Sometimes the source code is the primary product. A project like micro-Max would not be meaningful if the source was not public. It would just be another weak Chess engine.

Another reason would be to make the product acceptable for inclusion in Linux distros such as Debian, who do care a great deal about whether the source is closed or not. This was the main reason for opening the source code of HaChu.

In general I release the source in the public domain, in such cases. That makes it more generally useful as GPL'ed source, and more people will be using it in other projects.

Magicians and illusionists keep their tricks secret for otherwise they are violating a (behavior)code. Publishing old tricks is allowed. Why doesn't that hold for chess program developers ? At least if tricks are explained publicly all normal developers should have access to it and able to understand them.

Collaboration is good for those who collaborate. This might put those who don't collaborate at a disadvantage. Isn't that enough to understand why people collaborate? Where is the mystery?

Henk wrote:I do not understand what advantage it gives to a developer to make his source code open source code. Perhaps if you stop developing and would have removed it anyway ?

For some it is about practicing a skill, other maybe an interesting hobby. Open source is a way of sharing with others and does not hurt the programmer in most cases. The computer chess community is unique in its ability to create reasons for people to not release source code.

Oh the irony...

https://www.phpbb.com/

Probably running on a linux server...