Internet Chess Server: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:53, 16 January 2006

Revision as of 12:33, 16 January 2006

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== History ==

Michael Moore, of the University of Utah, and Richard Nash recognized the potential of an Internet chess server and programmed its first version at the [[Colorado School of Mines]]. The official opening date of the ICS was January 15, 1992. John Chanak, William Kish, and Aaron Putnam moved the server to a host machine at [[Carnegie Mellon University]] in the fallJuly of 1992, and took over its operation. Although it was [[Computer bug|buggy]] and suffered from [[lag]] problems, the server was popular among a small group of chess enthusiasts. Over time, many features were added to the ICS, such as [[ELO rating system|ELO ratings]] and support for [[Graphical user interface|graphical]] clients, and the server was made more stable.

In late [[1992]], [[Daniel Sleator]], professor of [[computer science]] at Carnegie Mellon University, took over management of the ICS. He addressed, among other issues, the frequent complaint that players would lose blitz games on time due to Internet lag. In 1994, he copyrighted the code, and began receiving purchase offers from companies wanting to commercialize the server. There were questions about whether Sleator was right to claim that the ICS was his intellectual property, since he did not code the original server, although he had made substantial improvements to its code.