Commercialisation of Open Source Chess Programs

[Zach Wegner]

Yes I did Dr.,

I sent an email to you a few minutes before you wrote that.

[kranium]

Uri wrote:

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.

if rybka was based on fruit, as many have suggested and some evidence suggests: http://64.68.157.89/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22281

Vas would then actaully benefit from a fruit/toga improvement (since it is public). he would be able to quickly and effortlessly implement the same (or similar) changes to the rybka code, maintaining any advantage which already existed.

[Zach Wegner]

Give it up! You're a cloner!

[Dann Corbit]

Open source software generates revenue in a number of ways:
1. Often, the programmers are bankrolled by large corporations who want to use the tools (e.g. PostgreSQL has commercial support from outside entities who want the product to advance).
2. Often, the product is complicated to use and so instead of selling the program they sell support (e.g. many Linux variants use this model).
3. It is not unusual to have dual or multiple licenses. For instance, a GPL tool may also be offered under commercial license. Why will anyone buy the commercial license? Because there is a stipulation that if you use the GPL version your code must also become GPL. People who have invested ten million dollars in their source code might be interested in spending one thousand dollars to buy a commercial license instead. An example of this is MySQL.
4. It is also legal simply to sell the GPL product for whatever you want to charge for it. You just have to make the source available also.

Personally, I would like to see the original authors compensated when a GPL product gets commercial traction. So (for instance) if Glaurung got modified by someone besides Tord and they started to sell it, I think it would be good if Tord were compensated. But that is just my opinion which carries no legal weight at all.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Yes I did Dr.,

I sent an email to you a few minutes before you wrote that.

Thanks Zach and good luck

[lexdom]

Based on Faile, was free and opensource until Sjeng 12.13. Of course, it's now significantly stronger than Faile.

[jdart]

GPL licensing is very restrictive. Yes, as other posters have noted, you can sell a GPL-licensed work. But the recipient of a GPL licensed program has all the rights the original distributor did. So if I pay you $100 for GPL-licensed program X, I can give away or sell copies of program X, too. If you do not also offer something else besides the program itself - such as enhanced support or update services - then every person you distribute to is a potential competitor to your distribution business. That is how GPL works.

Dual licensing is attractive to customers only when the recipient wants some right GPL does not convey, typically embedding or re-distributing without incurring the GPL obligations. Not clear many chess program users will fall in this category.

In practice, few companies have built large, profitable businesses from an open source model. Red Hat is one. But they are tiny compared to primarily closed-source companies such as IBM, Oracle, or Microsoft. Novell, the other major Linux vendor, is struggling. You could say MySQL is successful but they have relatively low revenue. Sun was bonkers to acquire them for what they paid.

--Jon

[terminator]

Bump ....there was some interesting stuff said here ....