[glinscott]

The great thing about these community driven efforts is that it is indeed feasible to reproduce these super expensive efforts. I'm a bystander now, as new maintainers have taken over, and they are doing a fantastic job pushing things forward.

This is also how Stockfish got to be the #1 engine. By being open source, and having the testing framework (https://tests.stockfishchess.org) use donated computer time from volunteers, it was able to make fast, continuous progress. It flipped what was previously a disadvantage (if you are open source, everyone can copy your ideas), into an advantage - as you can't easily set up a fishtest like system with an engine that isn't already developed in public.