Who is the author.
Luigi Forlano, Ph.D. in Physics, is the Vega's author.
My work
Until 2003 I worked as a researcher at the University of Calabria. My principal interest was the problem of ions scattering within the transport theory. I have almost forthy publications (articles and conference proceedings) in international journals.
For two years, from 1998 to 2000, I had a contract at the Institute for Atmospheric Pollution of CNR for developing numerical model regarding chemical-physical transformation processes and transport of mercury in the Mediterranean basin.
Currently I teach Mathematics and Physics in a high school of Cosenza (Italy).
Chess
Chess is my principal hobby (the second one is programming). Each summer I go abroad to play two or three tournaments (with weird results unfortunately). My highest FIDE rating was 2041. I am an International Arbiter too.
I have organised many tournaments, especially at school. In 2003, after a traumatic tournament with more than 400 players, unsatisfied of the existing softwares, I decided it was time to write a new program able to help the arbiter and not obstacles his work.
Thus born Vega. It was designed to be very intuitive and usable even by those who know little about chess. Vega was ready when my wife that wasn't an arbiter showed me to be able to run a tournament with Vega after a training of five minutes.
The program was released as freeware and was an immediate success. Vega costed me a lot of work and far above what I thought it was necessary at the beginning.
In 2006 Vega was approved by FIDE.
In 2007 the program was entirely rewritten in C++ to provide a modern interface. In 2018 Vega had a companion site where put online the tournament (www.vegaresult.com) and gather registration.
Vega is currently the standard program in Italy, New Zealand, Australia and Spain. It is used by arbiters all over the world.
Vega is very appreciated for its stability. In 2010 the site Scacchistars, the first chess room in the world offering money prizes, choses Vega to run their daily tournaments. Other sites are currently based on Vega (for example the FSIArena and the FIDE Arena uses Vega for pairing).
In 2008 began a fruitful collaboration with the IA Roberto Ricca author of the Swiss engine JaVaFo (Dutch system). In 2010 JaVaFo was released with Vega and finally the FIDE arbiters could enjoy all FIDE swiss systems in one software. In Istambul (2012) JaVaFo was for the first time endorsed by FIDE with Vega. Since then JaVaFo become the engine of many others pairing program.
Vega is currently the only program to have all FIDE Swiss systems. It is also the only one to run under Linux (for free), Windows, MacOS and Raspberry, hence is a valuable tool for spreading our sport where the arbiters cannot afford the cost of a FIDE endorsed software.