[ggo-discussion] Re: gGo, OSS, netlag and cheating

At 20:46 09.02.2003 +0100, you wrote:
> > I don't plan to split the application into two packages.

What might be interesting is the approach Goban is doing, a full 
closed-source application and a "light" version which is open source, 
containing the GNU Go interface (and an editor? Don't know, I have no Mac 
to try it).

Splitting the full gGo in two packages (basically one main Jar file plus 
the IGS extension library) is somewhat ugly, which is mainly my fault 
because the class design is not really good, I hacked too much IGS specific 
code into the core classes where it does not belong to. So this is an 
approach I would not really prefer. A "gGo-lite", stripped of the IGS code 
with only the SGF editor and the GTP code, should be - from programmers 
view - an easier task.

One issuse that cannot be ignored are the graphics. In my opinion gGo lives 
from the pretty graphics which I dare to say are excellent. I did not 
create them, so I can praise them without sounding selfish :) However, the 
artwork was also in the old sourceforge release excluded from the GPL and 
cannot be freely redistributed without the authors permission. There are 
some more non-GPL files, but these are no problem as the author gave 
permission to publish them as open source. But basically, for a gGo-lite 
I'd need to replace all the graphics, and I am not really sure if that 
would result in a still attractive client.


> > People who only want to use gGo to play against GNU Go can already do this
> > with the current version.
>Technically, they can do this, but it's not open source.
>Some people (like me) are troubled by this.

Being aware I will sound somewhat arrogant now, but I don't care much about 
that. If people feel disturbed by the license, they are free to use another 
available client. My goal is not to please everyone on earth, my goal is to 
offer a usable software to Go players. And if someone does not like my 
software and prefers other applications, that is perfectly fine with me. 
Competition is healthy. The vast majority of people wants to download, 
install and use the application, so they can do. But let's not get into a 
"free vs. free" discussion, I know the difference of free beer and free 
software in the FSF definition. I personally like and use open source 
software, but I also like and use closed source software and paid for it. 
And after all, gGo is distributed free of charge. I don't and will not 
demand payment for the usage. Money is not why I create this software.

To sum things up, the gGo-lite version was spooking through my head for 
some time already. However, I don't see an urgent need for such a project 
at the moment, and right now I definately would prefer to concentrate on 
other things first.

  Peter

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