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BGonline.org Forums
One of my dealings with a USBGF director and match recording
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: One of my dealings with a USBGF director and match recording (Michael Petch)
Date: Saturday, 29 January 2011, at 10:37 p.m.
Michael, I can appreciate your commitment to open source information and to backgammon's popularity and can surmise (perhaps) that Justin's (shall we say) "proprietary" objections to your adding his match to your archive, in light of your own uncompensated work with that archive and with GNUBG, has rubbed you the wrong way. But I found Justin's email to you to be polite and pleasant. Nothing to be "livid" about.
For what it's worth, I agree with you that the record of a match played online on a server with the conditions you describe is fair game for distribution by anyone without permission from anyone. And while I can appreciate, firstly, the work that Justin and others have put into recording matches and getting them online and, secondly, the obvious need for USBGF to develop ways to provide value for membership dollars, I don't think developing a collection of unannotated match records with access limited only to paying subscribers is a positive step for USBGF or for backgammon.
But I also think, Michael, that you've wrongly conflated your objections to USBGF's current state with regard to its (obvious) need for both income and providing value with Justin's personal (and not unreasonable) opinion. Further, I think your apparent belief that no one truly interested in "promoting backgammon" ought to be charging a fee for access to "generally useful" information has wrongly led you to an unsupportive and uncharitable view of USBGF's motivations and actions to date.
I'm dubious of your apparent belief that backgammon would be ever so much popular -- taken out of the abstract, "promoting backgammon" means more players online and at real life tournaments, doesn't it? -- if only value providers and book writers and organizers did it all for free. Playing online, using a computer, an internet connection, paying entry fees, buying the occasional book, travel expenses, writing books, maintaining websites -- all this costs something. Who should pay? Would it be nice if some rich and charitably minded person paid for everyone else to pursue our chosen hobby? Well, I suppose. But only in the same way that it would be "nice" if "someone else" paid for me to play backgammon on Thursday nights so I could still go out bowling on Fridays.
I see no evidence of "backgammon elites" barring "have nots" from fully participating in a backgammon community. It's not clear to me that you, Michael, are sufficiently appreciative of the truly voluntary contributions of the many, like Justin, who have worked to get USBGF off the ground. I don't think shaming these so-called "elites" into "voluntarily" providing any and all services free of charge is constructive.
As an American backgammon player and as a former member of a Danish backgammon federation, I have seen both what a robust organization can accomplish and the need for a formal, member-supported and ultimately member-run organization in the USA. At current exchange rates, individual DBgF membership costs US$91 annually, in light of which objections to USBGF's requests for US$40 for premium and US$15 for limited membership seem to me rather petty.
There are differences in the development of Danish and American backgammon organization and the value added by membership in the two organizations, most obviously that the Danish organization is largely responsible for growing a backgammon community from nothing twenty-odd years ago and for promoting a year-round calendar of events, while in the USA there is already a full schedule of events thanks to the hard and for the most part poorly compensated work of a rather small number of individuals. But I've watched approvingly, so far, as USBGF develops ways to add value and builds an evolving role in US backgammon in, as far as I can see, positive and healthy cooperation with existing actors in the American backgammon community. As USBGF continues to find its way, I think USBGF deserves our support.
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