Re: Go software

["P.J.Leonard" <P.J.Leonard@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Darren Cook wrote:
> 
> >can you tell us a bit more about how the GNU chess project came into being,
> >how it works in practice, and how to adapt the development methodology to
> >Go? I am quite interested in getting some Go project going, but I think it
> >is  an order of magnitude more complex in terms of volume of source code,
> >coordination between contributors and so on.
> 
> The question wasn't to me, but here are my thoughts.
> 
> Gnu Chess was mainly an engineering project - effective algorithms are
> well-known for chess, so the main issues were to do with implentation.
> 
> Go is a research project, and that requires lots of experimentation and
> trying ideas, most of which will fail and be thrown away.
> 
> Contributors will each have a different idea of how the program should be
> written, and with no strong evidence to prove that opinion the project will
> collapse into arguments and splinter groups.
> 
> Eric Raymond (open source advocate) says something similar in "The Cathedral
> and the Bazaar" (or maybe I'm just reading it (ch.9) that way).
> 
> http://sagan.earthspace.net/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar.html
> 
> However I do think that a joint project to develop a GUI can be successful.

 I aggree with all the above. I think that it would also be nice
to share a lowlevel board manager. This would act as the root
that would premote the sharing of objects. The work involved in getting
a board
manager and a decent set of lowlevel functions is considerable compared
with implementing
a GUI. 


 cheers Paul.