RE: [gnugo-devel] Go

[Man Lung Li]

The very first version GNU Go 1.0 was done in two weeks and I would say
taking less than 80 hours.

Man Lung Li

> -----Original Message-----
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> address@hidden On Behalf Of
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> Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 6:17 AM
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> Subject: Re: [gnugo-devel] Go
> 
> 
> > I was just interested in how long it took you to
> > develop the first version of Go (i.e. approx how many
> > hours total).
> >
> > Also, how much manpower did you have at the time?
> >
> > Sorry if my questions are a little too personal.  I am
> > interested for the purposes of estimating how much
> > time is put into creating such a program.
> > Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing
> > from you.
> 
> What do you mean by ``the first version of Go?''
> Here are the contents of GNU Go 2.4 AUTHORS:
> 
> > The author of GNU Go 1.2 was Man Lung Li. This program is derived
> > from his work.
> >
> > GNU Go 2.0 was released in April 1999. Its authors were Daniel Bump
> > and David Denholm.
> >
> > GNU Go 2.4 was released in September 1999. Authors of GNU Go 2.4 are
> > Daniel Bump, David Denholm, Jerome Dumonteil, Nicklas Ekstrand,
Gunnar
> > Farneback, Nils Lohner, Douglas Ridgway, Tommy Thorn, Thomas Traber,
> > and Inge Wallin.
> >
> > Douglas Ridgway contributed the CGI html interface in
interface/html.
> 
> There was an existing GNU Go written by Man Lung Li and
> Wayne Iba between 1998 and 1995, which were the release
> dates of GNU Go 1.0 and 1.1. You'd have to ask Man Li
> about that.
> 
> Although we started with GNU Go 1.1, little of the
> original program is recognizable in GNU Go 2.0. The
> main idea of GNU Go 1.1 was a pattern matcher, and
> this was changed by the addition of a graphical
> pattern database.
> 
> GNU Go 1.2 patterns look like this:
> 
> pattern 1: 230   connect if invaded
>            012
> */
>    {{{0, 0, 2},
>      {0, 1, EMPTY},
>      {1, 0, 3},
>      {1, 1, 1},
>      {2, 0, EMPTY},
>      {2, 1, 2}}, 6, 8, 82},
> /*
> 
> GNU Go 2.0 patterns look like this:
> 
> # pattern 21
> 
> |??.??
> |...*.         hane if attached
> |..OX.
> |.....
> |...X.
> 
> :8,82,0,0,0,0,-,0,NULL
> 
> The 2.0 database looks like the modern one. GNU Go 2.0
> added a pattern compiler which made it possible to add
> patterns quickly. While 1.2 has 24 patterns, GNU Go
> 2.0 has 751. It also has ancestral dragon.c and
> reading.c. It could read ladders at least.
> 
> GNU Go 2.0 was written between October 1998 and April 1999
> by myself and David Denholm. The project was started by
> me. I called the project Liberty but Jan van der Steen
> leaned on me to change the name because he had written an
> sgf editor by the same name. There is still a file called
> liberty. The program was solicited for the FSF by Stuart
> Cracraft and became GNU Go.
> 
> A similar project called Baduki was developed by
> a single person Lim Jaebum around the same time.
> GNU Go and Baduki were tuned in friendly competition
> against each other.
> 
> Gunnar Farneback and others started working on the project
> near the end of the 2.0 release. We weren't actually able
> to open up the project for others until David Denholm's
> employer signed a copyright assignment to the FSF. For
> this reason there were about 3 months when we made no
> releases but developed the program in secret. Finally
> the copyright assignment came through after David found
> the right paralegal to lean on and we started publicizing
> our code. I suppose it is OK to tell this story since
> he works for a different company now.
> 
> I think Gunnar started with us around March 1999 and
> contributed a few patterns to GNU Go 2.0. Basically, 2.0
> was developed by two people, David Denholm and
> myself. (You may say that I learned C programming from
> David Denholm though I never met him in person.)
> 
> After 2.0 in the summer of 1999 it became a major
> effort. Gunnar became a big contributor.  In
> addition to Gunnar, Inge Wallin, Jerome Dumonteil
> and Tanguy Urvoy were major contributors.  Nils
> Lohner got us started with autoconf.  GNU Go 2.4
> came out in September 1999 and was a lot stronger
> than 2.0. It added dragon.c and tried to
> understand life and death by static analysis.
> 
> After 2.4 we made a fork, and I maintained the 2.5 line
> leading to 2.6 while Gunnar maintained the 2.7 line
> implementing a lot of the features of modern GNU Go.
> I think 2000 is the year the program really took shape.
> The owl code (originally called mouse.c), influence
> code, gtp and other features were added in 2000.
> 
> Gunnar was the main author of the 2.7 line.
> He had a lot of help. By 2000 a lot of people
> were working on the project, like Teun Burgers
> and Trevor Morris. It took about a year to write
> GNU Go 3.0.0. Arend Bayer and Paul Pogonyshev
> came later but they can also be considered main
> authors of GNU Go 3.4 and 3.6.
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
> 
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