The program was RexChess and it goes back several decades. We only sold a few thousands copies and it wasn't copy protected.
In Europe we sold something like 40 copies, probably mostly in Germany but I can only guess. In computer chess tournaments I constantly had people come up to me with praise for Rexchess. These were mostly people from Germany or the Netherlands. Admittedly they were fans of chess programs, this being a chess tournament. But some reported that they had many friends who had copies of the chess program and I got information from them that you could get a copy for free. The program had no copy protection, those were my naive days when I expected people would see the product and buy it if they wanted it. It's hard for me to believe that I had been exposed to most of the 40 people who had bought a copy. That seems incredibly unlikely. It's not difficult to believe that I was exposed to 2 or 3 of them. A few years later I was pointed to a site where I could download that and just about any commercial chess program. We are talking several decades ago, I didn't bookmark the site or use it myself and I have no idea if it's still there. It's not uncommon, there are sites out there where you can get almost any piece of commercial software you want for free. I don't use them because I believe it is wrong. I'm not sticking up for capitalism here either. I think you have to play by the rules that are set up even if you don't agree with them unless they are blatantly immoral. Deep down inside I believe software should be free, but please let's not get into a philosophical discussion on this here. That's all the information I have on this. I have no hard proof of any kind. I didn't even really oppose it, but I'm making a note that I believe it happened. - Don On Sat, 2008-11-22 at 07:23 +0100, "Ingo Althöfer" wrote: > Dear Don, > > sorry to step in here, but I can't believe what you > write. So I would like to know some facts. > > > My first chess program only sold a few copies in Europe. > > What was the name of your program? > In which year was it published? > For what platform had it been? > > > But I came to find out that thousands of people had a copy of it. > > To which countries of Europe were your contacts? > (Europe is NOT one big uniform block...) > > > I met many people in Europe who said they had a copy and > > many of their friends did. > > I was a very active chess software use for many years. > I never had heard that you had written some commercial > program. (I only know about Star Socrates - where you were > involved - and which was runner-up in the 1995 World > Championships.) > > > Someone pointed me a site where you could download it for free. > > Which was that site? > > Ingo, European without pirated software. >
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