I guess they were interested in doing the testing and optimization for fun. From a product standpoint I probably would have invested my limited time in other projects.
One of the most famous examples is Wikipedia.
Technically yes, they are a non-profit. Impoverished ? Certainly not !
Look at the financials, as others have already pointed out. Especially if you are in the habit of donating to non-profits, the financials can make for interesting reading.
Also the organization is based in France. I don’t what impact that has on costs but it’s worth mentioning.
The impact on costs is "not small", because as a rough estimate, the charity pays overall about twice what the dev gets in take-home money, because French employer taxes are high (keyword for the Frenchies reading us: URSSAF).
Source: am President of the Lichess charity and have the honour and pleasure of dealing with most of the French administrative paperwork.
In no other industry a engineer would think like that...except in IT.
We definitely have too powerful and cheap Hardware, combined with lazy Wetware who just wants to "call it a day"....be proud of your work....or so they say.
In all industries there is always something you can do better if only you spend more time. But at most places time is worth money and I'd say $3000 for a few SSDs is little enough to not make this worth my time.
I have no idea why software people think their industry is the only one where people cut corners. Some form of meta-imposter syndrome perhaps.
Look, I come from that industry (metalworking), if you do friction stir where it's not needed you should be kicked out of your job, but wonder, I've never heard of such a thing in reality, don't tell me you're buying another friction stir cnc to save 100k "on people", friction stir is slow, expensive and any robot can weld (normal welding) faster.
Yes people are expensive, but un-optimised work is even more expensive (on factory level), NO ONE in the metal industry would do something like this if it was not necessary (well except the defence sector, because those guys are crazy and have unlimited money).
I call your made up story complete BS.
Makes sense from that perspective, but Lichess is not run as a for-profit company with a product, it's run as a non-profit organization (which it is), so a perspective shift is needed to understand their decisions :)
They have yearly expenses for more than $500.000
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk...
Seems really weird to be using harddrives when they already have expenses like that.
And while 500k is a lot maybe they can do so much with it because they do not just throw $1500 in drives at every problem.
"WDL tables (.rtbw) store the outcome of positions, e.g. if a position is winning. An engine will use this very frequently to decide which endgames to aim for. WDL tables should be stored on the fastest disk (preferably SSD) you have." "DTZ tables (.rtbz) tell the engine how to finish the endgame once it is on the board. They are optional, but required to reliably convert complicated endings."
Seems reasonable to put the WDL table on the SSD for better engine performance. I do understand not choosing SSD's. The number of lookups for positions always remains the same per user per game. Yet the tablebase is growing more than exponentially.
https://lichess.org/@/lichess/blog/7-piece-syzygy-tablebases...
Source: am président of the lichess charity (and also one of the sysadmins)
This is the implicit assertion that developer time is more expensive than hardware costs.
Seems true in the short term, until the whole system crumbles.