Alejo's Tenuki

Three years ago Frank de Groot decided to release Moyo Go Studio for free during a brief period of time. That unexpected decision, altogether with Frank announcing its retirement from the Go scene, was already commented on this blog back then, closely followed by the opposite post. As years passed by, we could see Frank working on its piece of software, with improvements going slightly unnoticed due to censorship in certain sites.

So, going back to the purpose of this post, it seems like Frank has decided to release Moyo Go Studio for free, once again. You can download this powerful tool from his site though it would be better to have other download sources, since the server is somewhat busy right now and speeds aren’t that high. The whole program itself weights about 300 MB and it includes an initial database of 57086 professional games but other downloads are available summing up hundreds of thousands of new games from amateur games extracted from KGS, CyberKiwon, IGS, NNGS and Tygem.

The more the download percentage increases, the more I wonder about the real purpose behind releasing Moyo Go Studio for free. Did Frank actually have a selling spree back in 2007? Releasing this software for free would certainly allow him to get into the news, which would make MGS more popular. However, a current  free release of a program may not be the best way to fulfil his hopes, since it would be a whole lot more difficult to erase the free version of MGS from the net than it was last time.

In the end, Frank may just be tired of selling his product and just wishes everyone could use his program.