GNU Go

GNU Go is a published by the Free Software Foundation free software that can play Go. It is under the GNU General Public License.

The program supports different board sizes from 5x5 to 19x19 fields. The playing strength corresponds to about 8 Kyū so that it remains significantly behind the level that is achieved by the best programs on reasonably fast hardware. This distance to the best programs has, however ( since about 2006) found only relatively recently by great progress in developing programs with fundamentally different operation than GnuGo.

GNU Go has no graphical user interface, there is only a kind of ASCII art interface for the command line. To use it as a computer game, should a second program that acts as the GNU -Go server client and used. To communicate with clients GNU Go supports two protocols: the Go Modem Protocol and Go Text Protocol that. Both are based on ASCII.

Revision history

The first stable version of GNU Go (Version 1.1) was released in March 1989. GNU Go is also available for Pocket PC, version 2.6.5 (2007).

Applicability to other platforms

GNU Go can on all Unix-like operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and more.) Are operated and has been ported among other things, on Apple's iPhone. Because Apple sells the program through its AppStore and prohibited in the terms that GNU Go is passed on the same conditions, violates the company from the perspective of the Free Software Foundation against the GPL.