Bug#163455: ITP: gnuchess-book -- Opening book for gnuchess
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Description: Opening book for gnuchess
This is the opening book for gnuchess. It was formerly distributed
together with gnuchess, now it has been separated due to size and
architecture-independence. It is recommended that you install it
if you want to use gnuchess.
Upstream URL is ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/chess/book_1.00.pgn.gz
License is Public Domain.
The book was part of the gnuchess source until version 5.02, since
then it is also not part of the gnuchess Debian package anymore. It
used to stall the slower buildd's but along with the format of the
binary book also the algorithm of building it has changed, and it is
now several orders of magnitude faster.
Regarding the license, there was a short thread on -legal on it, and I
finally got the following from Stuart Cracraft, who put the book
together.
We need to keep the book. It is not acceptable that the book not be
included with GNU Chess. GNU Chess strength based on quality of
moves early in the game as well as building up significant time for
middle-game computation are drastically halved in the absence of a
solid book.
I personally built the GNU Chess book from a large set of FREE game
collections from the University of Pittsburgh chess server. These
are NOT copyrighted and are PUBLIC. I also wrote the code for the
GNU Chess book without any reference at all to any other author.
It is GNU Chess code and PUBLIC book that is non-copyrightable.
--Stuart
I have contacted the maintainer of the gnuchess package several times
about adding a package for the opening book, but have received no
comments on this suggestion. In order for the book to be useful, bug
#144705 has to be addressed. I intend to NMU gnuchess if this one
(and, by the way, also #162701) is not fixed in the near future.
Lukas
--
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds
exactly the same opinion.
-- Oscar Wilde
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