Ownership issues regarding "openings.txt": The file "openings.txt" was developed by David A. Wheeler on August 1997, and is (C) 1997-1999 David A. Wheeler. Released under the Lesser GPL (LGPL). You can use it for commericial or non-commercial uses without fee, but you have to release changes back to the community. My goal was to create a freely redistributable database of Chess openings along with their ECO code and ordinary name, using the standard SAN codes as a key. I believe I've succeeded. You may use this database of openings for any purpose you like. I've relicensed this reformatted version under the LGPL; you can use it for any purpose, but if you make improvements to it you can't hoard the improvements. The file was developed using a set of scripts developed by David A. Wheeler, the program "Crafty", and an original long list of openings in a really nonstandard format. I then took the results and cleaned them up in various ways by hand. This original long list of openings was distributed from "ftp://ics.onenet.net/chess/", under the filenames ECO-database and ECO-database-fics. The ECO-database-fics was the file actually used, but that file was derived from ECO-database. It apparantly was originally developed by Franz Hemmer (franz@hemsoft.ping.dk) of the International Email Chess Group, and was posted to the rec.games.chess newsgroup on Tue, 18 Apr 1995 15:22:51 GMT by David Regis (dregis@exeter.ac.uk). The file was intentionally distributed on the Internet to a public group. All evidence seems to show that it was always intended that this information was distributed to the public without requiring any additional restrictions to distribution. Below is the header from the original file. =========================================================================== From group rec.games.chess Article: 62769 Newsgroups: rec.games.chess Path: news.acns.nwu.edu!movietone.ils.nwu.edu!news.ecn.bgu.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!hudson.lm.com!godot.cc.duq.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!gatech!swrinde!pipex!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!nntp0.brunel.ac.uk!strath-cs!info!dregis From: dregis@exeter.ac.uk (David Regis=) Subject: Re: E-Mail ECO? (LONG) Message-ID: Organization: University of Exeter, UK. References: Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 15:22:51 GMT Lines: 5453 After I posted my effort, I received this in the post... From: franz@hemsoft.ping.dk (Franz Hemmer) Newsgroups: rec.games.chess Subject: ECO DeLuxe! Organization: IECG, International Email Chess Group. Lines: 5443 ------------------------------------ A00 ------------------------------------ A00 Polish (Sokolsky) opening 1.b2b4 A00 Polish: Tuebingen variation 1.b2b4 g8h6 A00 Polish: Outflank variation 1.b2b4 c7c6 A00 Benko's opening 1.g2g3 (etc.)