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1.5 The GNU Go Task List

You can help make GNU Go the best Go program.

This is a task-list for anyone who is interested in helping with GNU Go. If you want to work on such a project you should correspond with us until we reach a common vision of how the feature will work!

A note about copyright. The Free Software Foundation has the copyright to GNU Go. For this reason, before any code can be accepted as a part of the official release of GNU Go, the Free Software Foundation will want you to sign a copyright assignment.

Of course you could work on a forked version without signing such a disclaimer. You can also distribute such a forked version of the program so long as you also distribute the source code to your modifications under the GPL (see GPL). But if you want your changes to the program to be incorporated into the version we distribute we need you to assign the copyright.

Please contact the GNU Go maintainers, Daniel Bump (bump@sporadic.stanford.edu) and Gunnar Farnebäck (gunnar@lysator.liu.se), to get more information and the papers to sign.

Below is a list of things YOU could work on. We are already working on some of these tasks, but don't let that stop you. Please contact us or the person assigned to task for further discussion.

1.5.1 General

1.5.2 Smaller projects

These issues are of tactical nature, i.e. they concern some specific feature or the infrastructure of the engine. Some of these are quiet small, maybe doable in a day for an experienced GNU Go programmer. They might also be useful project to start with for a new project member. Some of them are bigger and demand a deeper knowledge of the engine internals. The issues are presented here in an approximate order of perceived difficulty.

1.5.3 Long term issues

These issues are strategic in nature. They will help us to improve the playing strength of the program and/or enhance certain aspects of it.

1.5.4 Ideas

These are some ideas that have been floated on the mailing list. Some of them are down-to-earth, and some are just blue sky ramblings. They are presented here for inspiration.