[Gerben42]

Quote

I cannot see BBO becoming anything remotely like OKB while it is led by fred, sheri, uday and co.

Yes, and let's be grateful for that!

BTW I do not think one should allow GIB to play in pay tourneys.

[uday]

I'd like nothing better than to be able to have free bots. Unluckily

1. the bots are someone else's property (ie, much as I can't offer you free scans of every bridge book, I can't give away software that isnt mine). The sister case, Deep Finesse, explicitly allowed us to use DF at a table in exchange for the logo that pops up when it is used.

2. We (BBO) will make some money every time someone buys time w/a bot. I am not planning to retire on this cash. I'm not even planning a movie; lets see what happens. Maybe no one will care. Maybe Bots are worthless in an online environment for any number of reasons. Who knows? Who cares? We'll find out one way or another soon enough.

3. If anyone wants to buy out the GIB rights and then grant me a license to distribute them for free as GIB bots on BBO, I will be delighted to do so. I'll even put up a DF-sized logo in exchange.


4. GIB is a product of some other guy, some other company. How can *we* be taken to task that one new way of selling GIB doesnt cater to the original customers? Not my biz, just as it isnt my biz that your old gameboy isnt as sharp as the newer models. If you have a squawk about GIB, contact, well, GIB. Why should I subsidize him (maybe I will anyway, but I dont see why this subsidy is a right).



It is fruitless to worry that we'll turn into OKB. As long as we can afford it, the basics of BBO will remain unchanged (ie, free). We can "afford it" now. We couldnt afford it in the past but we did it anyway. Why suddenly worry after all these years that we'll change this ?

As long as we can think of new ways to make money without taking away from the basic site, we will do so. As long as we can think of new features to add for free, we will do so. Who decides which new things are free, which are pay? Dunno, we usually sort this stuff out as it happens.

[pigpenz]

Jlall, on Sep 23 2005, 09:24 AM, said:

Gerben42, on Sep 23 2005, 09:22 AM, said:

BTW I do not think one should allow GIB to play in pay tourneys.

It would be funny to see how long until GIB became a life master

Funny you should mention that, GIB at one time was registered as an ACBL member and somehow it caused some sort of uproar several years ago

[pigpenz]

uday, on Sep 23 2005, 10:40 AM, said:

As long as we can think of new features to add for free, we will do so. Who decides which new things are free, which are pay? Dunno, we usually sort this stuff out as it happens.

Has it ever been attempted to where everyone could just share their own bandwidth and have a P2P Bridge Playing Network. Sort of like the file sharing P2P Networks.

It seems BBO biggest cost is the bandwidth

[hrothgar]

pigpenz, on Sep 23 2005, 09:45 PM, said:

uday, on Sep 23 2005, 10:40 AM, said:

As long as we can think of new features to add for free, we will do so.  Who decides which new things are free, which are pay? Dunno, we usually sort this stuff out as it happens.

Has it ever been attempted to where everyone could just share their own bandwidth and have a P2P Bridge Playing Network. Sort of like the file sharing P2P Networks.

It seems BBO biggest cost is the bandwidth

I think that you are confusing fixed cost and variable cost...

Assume for the moment that that you've already develop BBO and have a nice stable code base, client side code, server side code, a few nice enhancements like Full Disclosure, whatever.

At this point in time, the major expense is most likely related to hosting:

You need a nice solid server
You need a nice bid pipe.

In theory, a if you architected the system using a peer-to-peer network, you could distribute this cost across the total user base. Matt Clegg originally designed OKBridge using this design philosophy. As I recall, the primary motivation had less to do with cost dynamics and more to do with academic research that Matt had done when he was at UCSD.

Two important points to consider:

1. If you are consider designing a system from scrath or re-architecting the existing system you need to wory about the fixed cost of the investment.

2. There are VERY significant security implications. OKB had a major incident in which a player wrote his own client and used this to "peek" at all four hands. You'd need to play some complicated games to make sure that this problem didn't crop up in a lot of the easy P2P implementations.

[uday]

Bandwidth is not a major cost.