
                         *** ANNOUNCEMENT ***

                              Opening of

                                 NNGS

                         The No-Name Go Server

                            August 5, 1995


Friends,

I'd like to express my gratitude.

In less than two years, the Internet Go Community has helped me learn how
to play Go, introduced me to hundreds of friends, and added great pleasure
to my life.

The time has come, I feel, to return something to the community.

In less than three months, twenty of us have succeeded at the
programming and testing of a new Go server.  We have affectionately
named it "NNGS" or "No Name Go Server", hoping that the right name will
come to us at some time.  NNGS has been carefully designed so that the
client programmers will not have to change their programs, so it will
be mostly compatible with your favorite client.

Some notable items at NNGS:

1)  Currently, no rating system exists.  We are working hard at
    designing one, and are constantly collecting data and ideas.

2)  We do have a great Ladder System, which is a continuously running
    tournament for serious players.  By winning just one even game,
    the challenger replaces the opponent's place on the ladder.

3)  Many new commands such as awho, censor, and gshout (Go related
    shout).

4)  Source code availability.  I am a strong believer in the GNU
    project.  Once the server is stable (should not be too long), we
    will make the entire source code available for anonymous ftp.

5)  Many friends who will respond to your ideas and questions.

Before telling you how to reach us, I would like to make a few more
comments, so please bear with me.

I wish to state clearly that we are, in no way, competing with IGS.  I
feel that all the Go servers can co-exist harmoniously.

My thanks to tim, tweet, and fmc for all the hard work they have put
into making IGS what it is today.  Had IGS never existed, I never would
have learned the game, and I certainly never would have worked on the
NNGS project.

Thanks to all the client authors for providing me with immense technical
information.  Without their help and support, this project would have
taken a much longer time to complete.

My special gratitude to the wonderful people at the Free Internet Chess
Server for giving us a huge head start by making their programming code
freely available in the true spirit of the Internet!

Ok, enough of the speech.  Here is the address:

                   localhost 9696

PLEASE NOTE the port number which is not the same as that of the IGS.

If you have any questions or difficulties, or just want to send us
your good wishes, visit one of the forums at:

                   http://sourceforge.net/projects/nngs/

Enjoy.


--
Erik Van Riper                                                 (718) 262-2667
Systems Administrator            Go player                     Photon Counter
Language design is 10% science and 90% psychology. -- Larry Wall, Perl Author

