Hi Norman,
often we, better I wrote the TalkChess members, wrote about the negative consequences around the Igorit history. You are a part from this history with source cleaning and your own development of the most important successors today are available.
I think the complete history of Igorit have positive marks too. Sune Fischer wrote yesterday an interesting message about the his own opinion.
Motivation is my topic, again and again. Many of the older programmers got new motivations with the topic Igorit. Unfortunately, much others lost motivation.
Have a look in the long years developements of Hiarcs and Junior for an example. Great is, that both programs don't lost his own face. The playing style and the way the programmers goes since years is the same. From this point of view I can understand the open letters but to many others points fall into oblivion.
It should be clear, that each one is proud of his own work. A programmer of an engine, Frank Quisinsky and his work on SWCR
, Norman with the fantastic work in code cleaning, find interesting UCI options and fix so many problems and so on, Sedat with his great books, tourneys and so on.
And the Houdini programmer find out a bit and added it in good known sources. Yes, the modern way in times today to create a development of a sofware application.
But all in all ...
Honesty is important but ...
Important too is ...
Understandings for others in combination what they do. Often I have problems in that and have a big mouth.
Computer chess people are individualist. Most thinking on the own advantage only, that make the situation very complicated to topics like Igorit, Houdini, Frank Quisinsky
or Norman Schmidt.
Let us admit that things have come to this. Now we must live with the situation we have
Fact is:
Junior is World Champion!
Thinking on Amir's first World Championchip. Before the tournament started he told all others ... "My program will win and will be World Champion"
Seems that Amir isn't easy
I don't know but Amir is great programmer and I think it's good that Junior won. This is the reward of a good work in the latest two years around Junior.
Best
Frank