Onno Garms wrote:
Moreover my engine outperforms some commercial engines (on single CPU). As a freeware engine it would be among the very top freeware engines and thus contribute to the recent increase of freeware engine's level, which is a threshold at the entry level for commercial engines. I believe that this increase is harmful, because it reduces the motivation for quite a few people who have promissing engines to improve it further. So after all it reduces the chances that an engine will catch up with Rybka.
Opensource engines, namely the Fruit branches, will never catch up with Rybka IMHO because they share all their secrets but Rybka doesn't.
Motivation for open sources engines is not competiton as I had stated in a previous post, so I completely agree with you that open source engines will never catch up closed ones.
In the previous post I said is like to play poker with only your cards on the table...there is no chance to win.
But I don't agree it is harmful. I think, on the contrary, that open sources engines (not closed sources free ones that I don't distinguish from commercial ones by this point of view) can give people an higher trampoline from where to jump on.
Without good open sources engines that serve as a reference it is almost impossible for a newbie starting from scratch hoping to catch up with the best commercial's in less then a life.
As you also have written in your site, open sources engines have been helpful for you to create your own Onno engine and I really hope that it will reach its goals. So that open sources although not competitive in itselfs can be instrumental in helping new engines aimed at competition to quickly gain strength and can be a good base upon which an engine author can add its new ideas and its added value.