[gnugo-devel] Contributing to GNU Go

[Wayne Iba]

Hi,
Actually, my first question regards attributions on your development page.  I am
Wayne Iba who modified the original GNU Go 1.1 as found in the original post
back in 89.  Perhaps you have a certain requirement to be mentioned in the
author section -- I was just curious.

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing is that I am teaching CS and have 10-12
students who will be working on a project for the Fall semester.  I would love
to have them work on GNU Go if we can find a suitable project.  There are a
number of ideas mentioned on the task list that sound exciting.  The two most
promising could involve applying machine learning (my background) to fuseki
tuning or improving the group-safety heuristics.  Several others, such as
speeding up tactical reading, also sound interesting but for the purposes of my
class, the students need the exercise of designing and implementing new code
modules.  Perhaps two other ideas worth considering would be enabling GNU Go to
think during the opponent's move and making the engine run on a cluster of 
machines.

Please contact me if any of these ideas sound reasonable for my class.  As I
said, there are 10-12 upper-division undergraduate students.  Factoring in their
experience levels and other commitments, I think we should estimate that they
could contribute 2.5-3 full-time person months.  I look forward to hearing from 
you.

Cheers,
--Wayne Iba