hrothgar2

Hi Peter Thanks for your thoughful response. In particular, your insights regarding expected development cost were very interesting. However, I must admit that your cost estimates are quite a bit higher than mine. Potentially, this arises from differences in development models. Professionally, I spent most of my career working in product development for software products. [primarily TCP/IP stacks and embedded operating systems] I agree with many of your comments regarding the cost required to support complex development projects. However, I have also seen a wide number of examples where so-called rapid protyping models have been able to produce products of equivalent quality for much less money. We're I the ACBL, my primary goal would be focused on laying the groundwork for an Open Source development effort. I will note in passing that most industry standards were not developed a priori, but rather are an ex post recognition that a specification has established a position of market dominance. In an equilvalent fashion, potentially the best way to foster the development of a standard would be to establish a close working relationship with a single provider, convince that company to agree to provide an stable interface specification, and move on from there.

There is actually a lot of debate regarding the precise maning of "natural". The Laws of Bridge provide a workable definition of the word conventional. Convention 1. A call that, by partnership agreement, conveys a meaning other than willingness to play in the denomination named (or in the last denomination named), or high-card strength or length (three cards or more) there. However, an agreement as to overall strength does not make a call a convention. 2. Defender's play that serves to convey a meaning by agreement rather than inference. However, the Laws never define the word natural. The ACBL convention charts do offer a definition for the word natural. Unfortunately, the definition is such that there are a wide number of bids that are both natural and conventional. For example, consider a Bailey style weak 2 bid, in which 2H is natural - it promises 5+ Hearts, but it is also conventional since it promises 3 spades, there by providing information about a denomination other than hearts. Back to the discussion at hand. Transfer responses to a 1C opening are clearly conventional bids. A 1D response provides a meaning other than willingness to play in the denomination named.