Re: [gnugo-devel] multi-threaded GNU go

[Christian Bienia]

Hi Daniel,

> > Before we can make a final decision, I wanted to get an opinion on that.
> > Do you think it would make a good parallelization project? How difficult
> > would GNU Go be to parallelize?
> 
> GNU Go would not be easy to parallelize but if it were done
> it would be hugely valuable. I think that some on this list
> have thought about this and may have more technical comments.

It's ok if the parallelization requires some work - the students will
learn more in that case. ;-) There will also be no other assignment, so
the students can work on the project the whole remaining semester. But
we need at least an initial roadmap and a rough idea about the amount of
work required before we can propose it to the students. There's some
leeway which can be used to adjust the work per student by determining
the number of students for this project.

> Would your students be able to assign copyright to the
> Free Software Foundation?
> 
> Of course this is not necessary from the point of view
> of the GPL. However if they could then the improvement
> could be added to the GNU Go code that is distributed
> by the FSF.

That's what we're planning. I'm not sure what the legal details are in
that case, but I don't see any problems with that. The students will
certainly love to see their work become part of a real program. Once
they have picked their projects, you can also contact them directly to
discuss these things. They'll probably show up on this mailing list
sooner or later anyway... ;-)

- Chris