I'm guessing running the war file would be next to impossible on an iOS device, so you would want a small server and have other iOS devices pointing at it. I am running the war file on my own system and server.

Anyone wanting to write a client in a non-html technology (like iOS, or Windows, etc) is taking on a significant risk: either you have to host the json converter on your own server, or you have to hope that wms hosts the json server on the kgs server.

Running your own json converter is fine for development, but I would not want to run it in production. There are hosting costs (compute+bandwidth) with no apparent means of income, unless you charged for the iOS or Windows apps, which sounds like a legal minefield. Furthermore, if there were technical issues, you'd have very little means to resolve them. The json converter is closed source, and you would have no access to the binary logs.

Realistically, you'd have to hope the 2nd scenario happens - that someone writes a good enough html client that persuades wms to host the json converter on the kgs server itself.

It has been suggested to embed the json converter inside the client application. An interesting idea, but since this requires Java itself, it may make the installation footprint enormous, not to mention complicated. It does suggest an obvious direction tho - perhaps someone can write a better Swing client

This is equally disappointing as when the stones sound issue was not getting fixed and when an HTML client was announced and never came ...

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

All technical problems have solutions, easier or harder solutions. But in this case, the biggest uncertainty is that the KGS owner's full cooperation is not guaranteed.

Quoting from KGS’ post on G+:

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

It seems evident to me that the biggest threat to KGS' future is its own parent. Sad, really.

Yeah as long as he refuses to opensource any of it, KGS development is doomed to stagnate.

I'm also pretty sure that wms is the only person on earth still posting on Google+