Re: [XBoard-devel] Installer

[Eric Mullins]

h.g. muller wrote:
> [...]
> Lack of a smart bundling strategy is the prime cause of the decline of 
> WinBoard amongst Windows users. They move
> to other GUIs that do provide all-in-one. People demand that nowadays.

I'm not sure I agree with that.  What evidence is there?

I know winboard has declined in popularity among players on chess 
servers.  In that demographic, the problem isn't bundling, but that the 
opposition is more appealing, generally more intuitive, and more 
cross-platform  (babas works great in wine).  That's not going to change 
no matter what how we bundle winboard.  Jin and BabasChess pretty much 
dominate the free category, and there is Arena too.

For running engines on a chess server, winboard is still very popular 
for casual users.  The only other reasonable choices for them are 
ChessPartner and Arena.  Those running winboard already may even decide 
there's too much hassle to switch to 4.4.0 because it's set up so 
differently from the way they currently run.  I personally know a few 
people who have tried 4.4.0, and are back to running 4.2.7.  I haven't 
asked them why-- I guess I should.    Again, a bundling strategy isn't 
going to change much here.

Some advanced engine operators may run winboard.  But I think icsdrone 
and xboard are a lot more popular for advanced 24/7 types.  There are 
several  custom icsdrone versions out there, most of which you would 
never know were icsdrone at all.  Nobody in this category is going to 
change how they operate.

Who else is there?  Just people who play against engines.  I don't have 
the foggiest idea about this group, but I suspect almost nobody uses 
winboard, nor have any desire to.  They use chessmaster, chessbase,  
shredder, doesn't rybka have a gui?

Face it.  Winboard is an advanced program for relatively advanced 
users.  You can try to make it easier for them by bundling, but I don't 
think that's really the job of the winboard project.  And I don't see it 
having any significant impact on "winboard market share."  I'm not sure 
that's really a concern of the winboard project anyway.