I feel a little bit funny about having you "represent" a program even
if it's a public domain program. It just doesn't seem quite right to
me but I know people seem to have completely different sensitivities
about things. For instance I know that feelings range from total free
for all to strict and rigid control. So mine is just another opinion.
However, I don't feel that you had anything at stake, or that there
was a conflict of interest.
Someone may say, how could there possibly be a conflict of interest,
it isn't even your program? Nothing at stake for you.
However any computer chess person will vouch for the fact that if you
give someone any kind of ownership of a program (even it is just
letting them operate it) they will get their ego wrapped up in it.
Witness the huge number of crafty clones that used to be on ICS with
their "representatives" putting enormous efforts into fighting for
them. Whenver someone operated my program in tournaments within a few
minutes they were saying stuff like "my program did this or that."
The fact that they called it "their" program tells you something.
I see that you have a good conscience about this from your concern
over it's appropriateness. I don't have any questions that you did
it for the positive reasons.
As long as you have Gnugo team approval, I have no problem.
I would suggest that you simply get their approval for all future
tournaments - get their permission in advance that Gnugo by default
will be entered automatically in future events until such time as they
want to change this arrangement.
The only issue is that sooner or later an issue will come up involving
Gnugo and then you will have to make some kind of ruling on this and
it will be painful because you will be accused of unfairness if you
rule in favor of Gnugo in a some diffiuclt decision. But this seems
fairly remote since the tourmanet is almost automatic (and could be
automatic in the future.)
Don
I am unsure whether it was right of me to enter a version of GNU Go
myself. Reasons in favour:
The more entrants, the better
People like to see their bots compete against GNU Go
It is no extra work for me, my PC is connected anyway
Reasons against:
The GNU Go was eight months old, a recent one would play better
As organiser, I ought not to help a program like this
I will welcome views on this, particularly from GNU Go developers.
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