Ultimate Go Server
An overview for all UGS-pages on SL is at UGSPagesOverview
What is UGS?
First of all, UGS doesn't exist yet - we just started with the planning.
The basic idea is to develope an open-source "Go-Communications-System" that will be much more flexible and free than go-servers like IGS and KGS are, just in the same way as Jabber can replace commercial Instant-Messangers like ICQ or MSN.
This system includes servers for just playing Go, but it can be much more can be imagined:
- lessons and commentaries can be held like in KGS, but come with much more features, like for dealing with control or managing private lessons and lists of who may watch/talk/propose variants etc.
- go-problems can be solved and discussed online on problem-servers. New move variants and commentaries can be added to the problems by everyone - so it's like a wiki
- database-servers can store huge collections of pro and ama games and Joseki for any kind of dynamic queries like the gobase.repository. They can use the same wiki-philosophy, though there should be restrictions to adding or editing the actual moves of pro-games
- news-servers could send sth. like RSS-feeds to the clients that want to get them, including information on where the clients can find additional go-resources (like games played in an event) that can be loaded into the client by one click
- the best part is maybe the possibility to exchange go-material easily from one service to another due to the commen public protocol. So after you loaded the new Kisei-game into your client, with another click you will be able to discuss it with others on a server. If you find an interesting problem-situation in it, you can easily mark the pattern and add it as a problem to a problem-server with another click. Or you could create a wiki-page on a wiki with UGS-support out of the game with - guess - another click! If we can convince Arno sometimes, maybe even SL can support this...
- transport-services could be used to play or chat with players on IGS or KGS (at least if they don't put us in jail for it) from your UGS-client
Contribute
If the above list made you curious, you might want to help us somehow with the project. If you're not a programmer, you can support us best by contributing to the UGSWishlist.
If you are creative, you can help us finding a new name, as "Ultimate Go Server" sounds boring and still refers to a single server, not a network as we plan now. So join the UGSNameDiscussion
Then, you could add yourself up to the UGS-Mailinglist
and join the
ultimatego-project at sourceforge - but this is not so urgent, as most is done on the mailinglist yet.