As was noted in this blog, Google decided to discontinue its programming contests (Code Jam, Kick Start and Hash Code).
It seems they will take down all relevant servers (and hence the problems and the submission system) for all these contests. While there are some initiatives to archive past Code Jam and Kick Start problems (for example, here — also have a look at this comment), there seems to be nothing similar for Hash Code.
As a past participant of Hash Code, I believe that these types of contests are quite important too, and may have directly or indirectly inspired other such contests (like the Reply Challenge and AtCoder Heuristic Contests). Also there are some techniques like simulated annealing and using SAT/ILP solvers that might not show up in standard competitive programming websites but do show up in such optimization contests. The tutorials for them will be lacking without examples too.
So here are my questions to anyone who might have reliable information about the contests, since everything seems to be in a mess right now:
- Are there copyright issues that prevent the problems from being archived and open for submissions elsewhere (for a non-profit scenario)? This also holds for the BOJ hosting, so it might be possible that they have discussed the relevant issues already (though I am not aware of any such details).
- Does anyone have any ideas on how to archive these problems? For instance, what kinds of data need to be preserved (statements? scorers? output submissions? code submissions? ranklists?).
- If all goes well, is it possible to set this up with other existing Code Jam and Kick Start archives?
