Commercialisation of Open Source Chess Programs

[swami]

Edit:In second thought maybe somebody tried this idea and did a deal with the author of rybka by telling him the improvement that he found in toga and got some money from him for not releasing his source.

Nah, That's unlikely, because computer chess is such a small community... not many people are yet unaware of Toga/Fruit except few programmers,

they would have to make better Toga...then they would have to make deals with Vas...Vas has to see whether the idea is useful, very very unlikely

What has Vas got to do with Toga/Fruit

Vas perfers rybka to be stronger than the opponents and releasing source of stronger toga may help the opponents.

It is better for Vas if better toga is not released and it is better for Vas to know some secrets how to improve toga when other programmers do not know them so maybe Vas is going to pay for not having new toga that may cause delay in the improvement of toga and delay in the improvement of the opponents.

Uri

Isn't that co-authorship?

[Uri Blass]

First and foremost I don't condone the Strelka thieves and so on who do what they do (no unsavory details). Isn't there a way for an honest programmer to develop something from Fruit/Toga (GPL permitting) and then get a product that is sellable? How then do companies make money off of open source?

The only honest way that I see to try to make some money(but not a lot og money) is to simply tell the public that you made an improvement of 100 elo to toga and post games without the source or the exe and tell the public that you are going to release the source and the exe only for 1000$(if you do not get 1000$ you keep the code private when you do not care if you get the money from 50 people who pay 20$ or from 100 people who pay 10$)

I do not know if 1000$ is too little and you can earn more than it or maybe it is too much and you need to decide about lower price.

I am surprised that nobody tried this idea.

Uri

Would many people believe this claim? What if he doesn't get 50 customers? would he refund the money?

I suspect many people would wait for any test results to appear before deciding to buy the engine.. because it is an engine based on Toga...

If he does not get 1000$ no money is paid to him.

The idea is that people talk between them and know that 1000$ are paid before they pay to the author(they can give the money to someone else that they trust who is going to give them the money back in case that he does not get the 1000$ to pay).

Uri

[Uri Blass]

Edit:In second thought maybe somebody tried this idea and did a deal with the author of rybka by telling him the improvement that he found in toga and got some money from him for not releasing his source.

Nah, That's unlikely, because computer chess is such a small community... not many people are yet unaware of Toga/Fruit except few programmers,

they would have to make better Toga...then they would have to make deals with Vas...Vas has to see whether the idea is useful, very very unlikely

What has Vas got to do with Toga/Fruit

Hi Gerold,

I don't think you understood my response to Uri. Uri was talking about ideas in hypothetical improved commercial Toga based engine that Vas may find it useful to implement it in his own engine's code. I said it is unlikely that someone would approach Vas with the idea.

Maybe the part of selling it to Vas was not clear so
I will make things clear.

My idea has 2 parts

part 1:
paying for releasing toga.
part 2:
paying for not releasing toga(when only vas is going to get toga)

In case of part 2 my idea is not that Vas is going to release improved toga but that Vas may use the ideas in the code inside rybka and that Vas may also earn from the fact that the new ideas are not known to the competitors.

Uri

[swami]

First and foremost I don't condone the Strelka thieves and so on who do what they do (no unsavory details). Isn't there a way for an honest programmer to develop something from Fruit/Toga (GPL permitting) and then get a product that is sellable? How then do companies make money off of open source?

The only honest way that I see to try to make some money(but not a lot og money) is to simply tell the public that you made an improvement of 100 elo to toga and post games without the source or the exe and tell the public that you are going to release the source and the exe only for 1000$(if you do not get 1000$ you keep the code private when you do not care if you get the money from 50 people who pay 20$ or from 100 people who pay 10$)

I do not know if 1000$ is too little and you can earn more than it or maybe it is too much and you need to decide about lower price.

I am surprised that nobody tried this idea.

Uri

Would many people believe this claim? What if he doesn't get 50 customers? would he refund the money?

I suspect many people would wait for any test results to appear before deciding to buy the engine.. because it is an engine based on Toga...

If he does not get 1000$ no money is paid to him.

The idea is that people talk between them and know that 1000$ are paid before they pay to the author(they can give the money to someone else that they trust who is going to give them the money back in case that he does not get the 1000$ to pay).

Uri

People talk between them, decide to appoint a leader(someone they trust), send their 20$ and the leader approaches the programmer and sends the 1000$ to him?

Sorry,Uri, I think this is kinda weird but it may work you never know

Better approach would be that the programmer sends the source code/engine exe to the single tester, the one who actively runs the tournaments, he publishes the results. And people will believe it and decide to buy the engine. (is sending a code as well as exe to single person for private testing legal?)

[swami]

Edit:In second thought maybe somebody tried this idea and did a deal with the author of rybka by telling him the improvement that he found in toga and got some money from him for not releasing his source.

Nah, That's unlikely, because computer chess is such a small community... not many people are yet unaware of Toga/Fruit except few programmers,

they would have to make better Toga...then they would have to make deals with Vas...Vas has to see whether the idea is useful, very very unlikely

What has Vas got to do with Toga/Fruit

Hi Gerold,

I don't think you understood my response to Uri. Uri was talking about ideas in hypothetical improved commercial Toga based engine that Vas may find it useful to implement it in his own engine's code. I said it is unlikely that someone would approach Vas with the idea.

Maybe the part of selling it to Vas was not clear so
I will make things clear.

My idea has 2 parts

part 1:
paying for releasing toga.
part 2:
paying for not releasing toga(when only vas is going to get toga)

In case of part 2 my idea is not that Vas is going to release improved toga but that Vas may use the ideas in the code inside rybka and that Vas may also earn from the fact that the new ideas are not known to the competitors.

Uri

Well, I understood your earlier post alright... but I think it is unlikely that Vas would bother about something that is Toga derivative. It is unlikely that Vas would worry about new ideas in Toga derivative engine.

I don't think Vas will give money to someone who has Toga derivative engine and persuade the guy not to release Toga derivative anymore.

[gerold]

First and foremost I don't condone the Strelka thieves and so on who do what they do (no unsavory details). Isn't there a way for an honest programmer to develop something from Fruit/Toga (GPL permitting) and then get a product that is sellable? How then do companies make money off of open source?

OpenSource is not for making money directly.
It is to enhance learning.
The aquired knowledge can then be applied for making money (without copy and paste).

Matthias.



.

So could Thomas improve a little more on Toga and sell it.
He has improved it so it is a lot stronger than Fruit.

Best to you,
Gerold.

If this is a version that he did not release maybe he can do it and it is also dependent on how much he improved it.
There are 2 ideas
1)selling it to Vas in order not to release it.
2)selling it to customers(and release it only if customers pay at least X$)
I guess that for some X people are going to buy it because even I am going to buy significantly better toga for 1$ in case that I am convinced that it is significantly better.

Uri

Thanks for the reply. I would buy an improved Toga. I like this
program and it plays some exciting games.

Gerold.

[terminator]

Let us say you from Toga you made a new engine "Enricotov" for example and made the following improvements for arguments sake :-

- could beat Hiarcs, Fritz, Junior, Zappa bar Rybka
- the MP version could scale very well and even beat Rybka on 8 cores
- you attribited the source as a Fruit/Toga derivative
- The new program "Enricotov" is LGPL but you can point people to the free Toga souce
- Your enhancements are not realesable (you do not give people the code to your enhancements)


One cannot say that money cannot be made from Open Source, look at Linux or the Mac for example.

[Zach Wegner]

No, that doesn't work. First of all, you cannot relicense Toga under the LGPL which is different than the GPL. Second of all, when you make modifications, you have to release those under the GPL too. That's called "copyleft" software. Finally, all Linux code and all the Mac OS code is sold in compliance with the license. In OS X's case, the kernel is BSD licensed, therefore not copylefted, so it doesn't have to be open source, only the copyright must be acknowledged.

Nobody is saying you can't sell open source. We are only saying you have to obey the license terms of open source programs, and making a profit off of violation makes it much worse IMO.

I might be wrong on some details, but the point is you can't do that.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

No, that doesn't work. First of all, you cannot relicense Toga under the LGPL which is different than the GPL. Second of all, when you make modifications, you have to release those under the GPL too. That's called "copyleft" software. Finally, all Linux code and all the Mac OS code is sold in compliance with the license. In OS X's case, the kernel is BSD licensed, therefore not copylefted, so it doesn't have to be open source, only the copyright must be acknowledged.

Nobody is saying you can't sell open source. We are only saying you have to obey the license terms of open source programs, and making a profit off of violation makes it much worse IMO.

I might be wrong on some details, but the point is you can't do that.

Hi Zach,
Check out your pm box....
Did you recieve my e-mail

[Uri Blass]

First and foremost I don't condone the Strelka thieves and so on who do what they do (no unsavory details). Isn't there a way for an honest programmer to develop something from Fruit/Toga (GPL permitting) and then get a product that is sellable? How then do companies make money off of open source?

The only honest way that I see to try to make some money(but not a lot og money) is to simply tell the public that you made an improvement of 100 elo to toga and post games without the source or the exe and tell the public that you are going to release the source and the exe only for 1000$(if you do not get 1000$ you keep the code private when you do not care if you get the money from 50 people who pay 20$ or from 100 people who pay 10$)

I do not know if 1000$ is too little and you can earn more than it or maybe it is too much and you need to decide about lower price.

I am surprised that nobody tried this idea.

Uri

Would many people believe this claim? What if he doesn't get 50 customers? would he refund the money?

I suspect many people would wait for any test results to appear before deciding to buy the engine.. because it is an engine based on Toga...

If he does not get 1000$ no money is paid to him.

The idea is that people talk between them and know that 1000$ are paid before they pay to the author(they can give the money to someone else that they trust who is going to give them the money back in case that he does not get the 1000$ to pay).

Uri

People talk between them, decide to appoint a leader(someone they trust), send their 20$ and the leader approaches the programmer and sends the 1000$ to him?

Sorry,Uri, I think this is kinda weird but it may work you never know

Better approach would be that the programmer sends the source code/engine exe to the single tester, the one who actively runs the tournaments, he publishes the results. And people will believe it and decide to buy the engine. (is sending a code as well as exe to single person for private testing legal?)

It is legal to send source and exe to a single tester for private testing.

Of course the seller needs to convince the buyers that he has something better so doing it first may be a good idea if somebody likes to sell modified toga.

Uri