Bug#166259: ITP: lasker -- FICS-like free internet chess server
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Upstream Location: http://chess.samba.org/
Authors: Richard Nash, Dan Papasian, Andrew Tridgell
License: GPLv2 (well, almost, see below)
Description: lasker is a free internet chess server, forked from the
last free available version of FICS (http://www.freechess.org), who
unfortunately decided to close their source. It provides a server for
humans or bots to login and play chess. The FICS protocol is supported
by most popular chess user interfaces, like xboard and eboard.
Currently I am still sorting out some license and security issues. In
particular, the CVS source includes "mamer", a bot which runs
tournaments. Unfortunately, that code has no license at all (and was
not included in the releases). I will try to clarify that and get the
authors to release it under a DFSG-compatible license. It would be a
great enhancement to lasker. Furthermore, there seem to be (small,
could be replaced) files with some variant of the obnoxious BSD
advertising clause. As to security, Andrew Tridgell already fixed
several buffer overflows and the like, but still has some sort of
security disclaimer in the README.
I invite other chess-interested maintainers to help me, it will be
some work, but I consider it worthwhile, as there is currently no
other usable free internet chess server.
Lukas
Reply to: