If he were selling ....

[AdminX]

If Aleksandar Naumov were to sell his Naum 4 source code to the highest bidder, How high would you go? Would it be worth it in your attempt to Top Rybka? Or would you say to hell with Rybka and make it (GPL) open source? How much do you think he could get for the source code?

[fern]

To sell suppose a market willing to purchase and that I cannot see these days.
Chess computer market is fully, absolutely saturated.
I see that in my self. In other times I purchad almost anything. Now, nothing. Sure I am not but one guy, But I smell many feel and do the same.

Fern

[Kaj Soderberg]

Enough to get himself whacked, and soon Rybka will be taken over by a class of Finnish university kids like Joona and Teemu, led by their Guru Linus.
It's all in place, waiting for the Nokia tune to go off.

Cheers,
Kaj

[Eelco de Groot]

Enough to get himself whacked, and soon Rybka will be taken over by a class of Finnish university kids like Joona and Teemu, led by their Guru Linus.
It's all in place, waiting for the Nokia tune to go off.

Cheers,
Kaj

I agree with you Kaj. Code that is standing still is just not worth very much. It is but a starting point. If it isn't maintained, it ages about as quickly as the hardware it is running on. Just look at Rybka, free Rybka 2.2n2 was state of the art, what, about two years ago?

Rybka 2.2n2 is not source code, but then you can look at Strelka. I have not studied Strelka code but am sure it has helped programmers, but not so much that even the best could build something from it that is as good as the best demonstration Rybka. Not so far.

If somebody would have enough money and interest to try to build something of similar strength as Rybka, the Naum source code would not be nearly as valuable as Alexander Naumov's time spent on it. He would do much better hiring Alexander if he was still motivated enough, why not, if he got paid really well and got all the resources he would need for testing, assistance maybe for coding testversions or for building spcialized hardware. Those could motivate a good programmer to spend the thousands of man hours needed to build a top program. That is the kind of price an Arabian sheikh should expect to pay for that kind of 'Manhattan project'. Alexander's motivation is a lot more valuable than his code if you look at it that way. In a similar vein , everybody willing to spend some small amount on an excellent program is helping computerchess in general, just by motivating the programmers a little bit, which is in my eyes certainly as rewarding as having the program itself!

Regards, Eelco

[Ryan Benitez]

Most people will not sell full rights because they will not get close to what it is worth that way. If it was on the market I would offer $4k and that is not even close to fair value. Fair value for the effort is about $240k but no one will get that. Someone would offer more than me (maybe about $10k?) but I highly doubt by enough to make it worth it to Naumov.

The problem is that it would need to be improved by at least 50 elo for people to buy another release and it would become a full time job to improve and support the engine.

[Ryan Benitez]

It turns out that Nuam 4 is a lot stronger than I thought and it also has a pocket version so I would estimate that someone could play $25k and hire a marketing person to work for $25k part time work and break even in about a year. Rough estimate though. With this logic I think someone would only pay $25k because it is too risky to invest thinking out more than 1 year. Considering the time and skill for such an engine the offer would be insulting though.

[zamar]

Enough to get himself whacked, and soon Rybka will be taken over by a class of Finnish university kids like Joona and Teemu, led by their Guru Linus.
It's all in place, waiting for the Nokia tune to go off.

Just to correct a few misunderstandings:

* I don't know what you mean by "university kid", but I already finished my studies around four years ago.

* My daily work (teaching math on secondary school) and taking care of my kids eats up so much my daily time, that it's totally impossible to start competing with professionals. No, I just want to test some of my own ideas... just for fun.

* I Don't know what Teemu is doing currently, maybe he has more ambitious plans

[swami]

If Aleksandar Naumov were to sell his Naum 4 source code to the highest bidder, How high would you go? Would it be worth it in your attempt to Top Rybka? Or would you say to hell with Rybka and make it (GPL) open source? How much do you think he could get for the source code?

It wouldn't be very high. Computer chess is just mostly an hobby field. One wouldn't become a dot com billionaire by selling the source code of high ranked engine. One could care less about the source code, it's meaningless and this hobby ain't popular either. 1000-2000 dollars atmost but many people would be reluctant even to bid for it.

[Kaj Soderberg]

Just kiddin' what Finnish computer wonder boys is concerned, and certainly about whacking mr. Naumov for earning millions on further enhanced Naums.
The bit more serious moral of the story is to be read in Eelco's answer.

Cheers,
Kaj

[Osipov Jury]

To Eelco:
I have the sources of Rybka. And I know that Rybka and Strelka are different engines. Maybe with some unsignificant similarities (as example UCI parsing from Fruit).

P.S. If anybody want the sources of Rybka, please don't disturb me.