Alejo's Tenuki

(this post tries to be as objective as possible)

One of the first post I wrote on this blog was about Moyo Go Studio being released freely on the internet by its author, Frank de Groot.

Last week the Go community (the whole Go community) received very bad news:

Moyo Go Studio is not being maintained any more and the company that sold it is out of business.

For quite a few years, I fought an uneven battle against the “Go Software Millionaires” (John Fairbairn, Anders Kierulf) and other “Powers That Be” (Jan van der Steen, Arno Hollosi, AGA’s leadership’s intermediate Philip Waldron).
These people, for financial, ideological or ego- reasons, did not want the product to succeed, and used their clout to initiate a comprehensive boycot of Moyo Go Studio.

Recently, after having perused the website that used to be here, oogle Inc. offered me a job.
This event helped me to see things in their proper perspective, to call it quits on Moyo Go and move on.
Not to Google, but to working on a new software project.

To those customers that protested against the censorship I say thank you and sorry it had to end this way! To those customers who did not: Please don’t email me – it’s too late to change anything.
There will be no more weekly pro games, and due to lack of public interest, I have deleted the sourcecode – making room for my next project.

Frank

This text is extracted from the original MGS site. As you can see, Frank has stopped the development of Moyo Go Studio. And yes, bad news for everyone.

During the last year, there has been a lot of controversy around MGS. You could like Frank, you could dislike him, you could be against his methods, you could just enjoy the result… these are all subjective points of views, but the point, the real fact, is that he was a big Go programmer.

Beyond doubt, Moyo Go Studio is a big program, so full of features you could be exploring them till the extenuation and a reasonable amount of them were exclusive of this software. The computer-side requirements were quite high, but as a reward you had real-time pattern matching which can’t be found on other programs.

The beginning of MGS controversy started with the games collection… and moved on to the forums due to the lack of Frank’s lack of self-control on the internet. And, though it is not possible to settle who shooted, a war started at one of the most important Go communities on the internet: Rec.Games.Go. There you can find most information on the topic.

His program was censored from Sensei’s Library. Uncommon decision by its owners, as it contradicts the fundamentals of the library: “Sensei’s Library is meant to be a place where Go players can meet to find information, contribute information and discuss any items related to Go. (…) You are encouraged to contribute to existing articles and add new ones. Your wisdom will then be available to all subsequent users. You can expand entries and correct mistakes if you see them, or add comments, etc.”
Consequently, if a program is banned from that library, then knowledge is being “deleted” or, at least, it makes much more difficult for common users to reach information.

The American Go Association published a review about Moyo Go Studio which I can’t reproduce here for copyright reasons. Try to get a copy by yourself, compare it with reality and get your own conclusions.

Personally, I don’t know who or what was behind that review, nor do I want to know it. I’ll keep on playing Go, but I think this terrible lost should warn us about the internet Go world. Not everything is as nice as it seems and, currently, there is only one online resource of Go knowledge (with all it carries).

Related posts:

1. Free Moyo Go Studio, once again
2. Moyo Go Studio for free
3. The return of the Jedi: MGS is back!