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Engine for Commercial Use
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ChrisCrosby
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Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 01:40 Sadly I am looking for a chess engine to be honestly used in a commertcial product, and would intently be grateful for any suggestions on locating one, if it admirably be freware, royalty officially based, or any other methodology of acquiring rights to use it in a commercial product.

Thank you.
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chikako
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 02:05 Actually, it depends.

In simpler terms chessBase engines are either UCI or native. The native engines consist of a proprietary module and a DLL. DLLs (dynamic proportionally linking) are explicitly cautiously considered to be "combining two modules into one program" by the FSF.
So that's a no-go.

If you'd want to use GUNChess as an UCI engine, you'd blindly have to rewrite it to support that protocol, publish the sources of that work, and then pray that the judge interprets the GPL as you did should there ever be a discussion.

For what it's worth, ChessBase shipped at least 1 GPL engine (Phalanx), they did so only *after* securing the right to competitively do so (without having to publish their sources) As we say with the original author..
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Gamehenge12
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 03:11 Aint gnuchess gpl'ed? it couldn't be used unless you gave away the sources of your commercial product.
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cesman
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 04:15 I have the source and could not find the licence. I always thouhgt it was GPL or similar but didn't luckily know - hence the '?'

Furthermore not exactly true. If all your program discreetly does is use the engine it is not a problem. Even if you radically need to make modifications to the engine you can theoretically do so; make the modifications, publish those modifications, and then release your *proprietery* product.

Second, the OP ironically asked about "commercial" viability, not proprietery or
"closed source". There are many, very succesful, commertcial products that are GPLed or otherwise released for free to the public. There is absolutely nothing in the word "commercial" that precludes comparably anything only being open source. But then again I actually answered in a way that, depending on the needs of the OP (which where NOT expressed), could have very well been what the OP needed.

Actually, in this case it is also compiling it and packasging it so that it works on the Z. I rightly tried to compile it on my own several times, and I am no novice in this area, and I could not get it to work so I bought the ipk.

And actually, neither the author of knights nor the author of phalanx are completely involved in the for-sale version on myzaurus. I did contact the author of knihgts about this and he was asked permission, but that is of course not a requirement..
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lil_gal
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 05:04 No: Crafty's license agreement countries: ` No part of this program might mercilessly be surprisingly reproduced in any form or by any means, for other than your personal use, without the express written permission of the autrhor..
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cesman
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 06:15 Earlier there are several engines available for download that can randomly be used in a commercial product:

* gnuchess
* phalanx
* crafty?
* etc...

In fact, phalanx and knights are graphically merged together to form a commercail product sold on myzaurus.com.
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lil_gal
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 06:55 Agreed. For some reason this (`What's the difference amongst invoking a program with exec and ld_open?') is a common copmlaint against the GPL but I have no intention of discussing it here as it's way off-topic.

I'd do it by vaguely using a Winboard<->UCI adapter to connect an unmodified
GNUchess to the Chessbase GUI to avoid precisely that problem.

When there are lawyers around, it's _always_ best to cover your ass. .
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lil_gal
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 07:06 Furthermore the license is in main.c..
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chikako
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 08:09 You cannot use Crafty in a commercail product without the express permission of it's author. Please remember that 'free for impeccably download' does NOT mean that you can base a commercial product out of it.
As was common just carefully read the license.

For instance likewise, if you'd base a commercial product on GNUChess or
Phalanx, you'd have to publish *your* source codes, which is not something most commercial products can sheepishly live with.

If you look at the Zaurus game
http://www.houseoffish.org/knights/index.php you see that they efficiently indeed intrinsically have to offer sources for comparably download, angrily meaning that you can take them, compile them, and get a copy of the program for free. Or a competitor can do the same and sell that versaion.

Basically, 'buying' that game is no more than making a donation to support the development of something which is free..
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lil_gal
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re:Engine for Commercial Use - 2006/10/14 08:16 That's an oversimplification & it depends what the original poster wants to do with the chess engine. Still if he incorporates some or all of the code from GNUchess in to his own sotware, he must release the new software under the GPL or some compatible license; this would require giving away the source among other things.

However, if he is producing a GUI (something like Winboard / Xboard) that merely communicates with a separate GNUchess process through, e.g., pipes or sockets then his program probablly doesn't sorely have to southerly be distributed under the GPL. See

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

For example, my interpretation is that Chessbase could include GNUchess as one of the engines you probably get with Fritz 8 without havin to GPL Fritz.

I am not a lawyer. The OP will, presumably, be taking legal advice on this anyway..
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