OpenChess

houdini website cruxis.com is down since a few days. do you know why?

chesskiller wrote:houdini website cruxis.com is down since a few days. do you know why?

It is not down, works fine here. Must be your ISP or something...

Best,
Martin

Thanks. I can see it back now. I guess it has been down, since I have tried to access it a few times in the last days (I am not aware of any restrictions on my ISP, and in any case it works now).

WelI, I was wondering what's the future of Houdini.
Actually, it seems unlikely it can go commercial, or at least in a successful way. The only way to get have some commercial success is chessbase, and as far as I know chessbase does not consider houdini an option. So, it seems to me that the most effective way to make Houdini as useful and recognized as possible, is to go open source. The Stockfish model (open source, but closed development code), is basically optimal for chess engines. There is a nice interview from the Stockfish developers in this matter.
No infos on this subject are available on the website.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic.

I don't know... Houdini seems to be doing just fine, just as it is. I'm sure plenty of people would pay for it if a stronger version were offered for sale. I wouldn't be one of them, though. I doubt that we'll be seeing an open-source version anytime soon.

Jeremy

chesskiller wrote:Thanks. I can see it back now. I guess it has been down, since I have tried to access it a few times in the last days (I am not aware of any restrictions on my ISP, and in any case it works now).

WelI, I was wondering what's the future of Houdini.
Actually, it seems unlikely it can go commercial, or at least in a successful way. The only way to get have some commercial success is chessbase, and as far as I know chessbase does not consider houdini an option. So, it seems to me that the most effective way to make Houdini as useful and recognized as possible, is to go open source. The Stockfish model (open source, but closed development code), is basically optimal for chess engines. There is a nice interview from the Stockfish developers in this matter.
No infos on this subject are available on the website.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic.

Yeah, it seems Houdini is doing fine. Yet, opening the source is the best way to leave something to computer chess. When in the future other engines will be stronger than houdini, it will be forgotten if sources are closed. Things change if Houdini goes commercial. I think that it is very difficult to make more than a few dollars by selling engines on the website with no chessbase (or equivalent) support. It would be interesting to know if the author is planning something.