What will Masterplan be after the C&D?

[malraux]

And Masterplan is not violating that portion of the agreement. It's not a difficult concept to follow. They are breaking other portions, but not that one.

WotC doesn't set definitions for the computing industry. The fact that they incorrectly use the term is just evidence of their lack of competence when it comes to the digital world. It doesn't change the meaning.

What would you say they are violating then?

 

[Fifth Element]

It doesn't matter what WotC "meant" by the term.

I was referring to the term's use in this thread, actually, by other posters.

 

[guivre]

I was referring to the term's use in this thread, actually, by other posters.

As was I originally. There's nothing wrong with pointing out a mistaken use of a phrase. Unless you're afraid of someone actually learning something.

I love internet forums. A simple correction turns in to a multi-post conversation by people desperate to not be wrong.

 

[malraux]

Meh, replace mining with scraping. I stand corrected.

 

[doctorhook]

Your ignorance of the term doesn't make it obscure. It's a ubiquitous term that some people, having heard it, assumed they knew what it meant and started using it themselves despite having no idea what it means.

It's not besides the point at all, it was precisely *my* point, which is the only point I care about. Masterplan was repeatedly accused of data mining in this thread. They were not.

And Masterplan is not violating that portion of the agreement. It's not a difficult concept to follow. They are breaking other portions, but not that one.

There's nothing wrong with pointing out a mistaken use of a phrase. Unless you're afraid of someone actually learning something.

I love internet forums. A simple correction turns in to a multi-post conversation by people desperate to not be wrong.

guivre, in the past few hours you've managed to "crap" a perfectly good thread. Though your points are somewhat relevant to our discussion here, you absolutely could have phrased yourself more civilly in all of these posts. Chicks don't dig guys who berate people over the internet.

 

[firesnakearies]

Actually, I really don't mind Masterplan not being able to scrape the Compendium and save everything in there. As long as I can still import individual creatures I make in the Monster Builder into Masterplan, that's perfectly fine for me.

 

[Plane Sailing]

As was I originally. There's nothing wrong with pointing out a mistaken use of a phrase. Unless you're afraid of someone actually learning something.

Guivre, this post of yours exemplifies the problem, and doctorhook hits the nail on the head here:

guivre, in the past few hours you've managed to "crap" a perfectly good thread. Though your points are somewhat relevant to our discussion here, you absolutely could have phrased yourself more civilly in all of these posts.

Please make an effort to be civil in your posting habits guivre; make your point without losing your cool.

if you've got any questions about this, feel free to PM or email me.

 

[wedgeski]

I checked this app out briefly to see what it could offer me in terms of improved prep, and I was very impressed. I never really got around to using it in anger though.

However, if the author in any way allowed DDI content to be written to disk and transferred to another user who didn't have a DDI account, he was programming on borrowed time.

We get all agitated over the legal hammer whenever it's used against the community, but it seems to me that the few times Wizards have deployed it, they had a legitimate gripe.

 

[Kafen]

I checked this app out briefly to see what it could offer me in terms of improved prep, and I was very impressed. I never really got around to using it in anger though.

However, if the author in any way allowed DDI content to be written to disk and transferred to another user who didn't have a DDI account, he was programming on borrowed time.

We get all agitated over the legal hammer whenever it's used against the community, but it seems to me that the few times Wizards have deployed it, they had a legitimate gripe.

One thing to consider, modern software is modular. The databases are almost always HD driven on that level which involve at least a manual transfer of data files. In this case, iPlay4e involves shifting data through the Character Builder format. Masterplan uses the Libarary format. In order to be successful, Masterplan has to offer that portability through .Library files. Otherwise, we are left with failing platforms that don't deliver the content to modern devices.It's not a good thing when large companies like WOTC hinder the growth of innovation that benefits the player base in general.

I would support what you say 100% if WOTC had made any attempt to hunt the 'illegal' data files on torrent. Considering that at least two of the big ones host the files - something that they would not do if WOTC asked them to remove the files - on torrent.

For the record, I'm not a huge fan of 4e. So, it is not a personal bit. Some people want to call it a loop hole when people create innovative software. I call it WOTC being irresponsible for their actions. They release the file format for Character Builder and encourage a basic API. Then, they protest when people use it. It's not cool for software developers which is my primary complaint with the whole affair at this point. Why distribute the technology if you plan on stopping people from using it?

 

[Kurtomatic]

Intentionally conflating the very distinct data management strategies of iPlay4e and Masterplan is severely misguided, in my opinion. Data storage is data storage? One strategy permits casual sharing of proprietary data, the other does not.

I haven't used iPlay4e in a few weeks, but as far as I am aware it reads (not stores) data from CB character files (which are freely distributable and contain no proprietary data) and writes a copy of them, as well as your personal game data, to Google's cloud data service. I seriously doubt iPlay4e is writing Compendium data to anything but memory, or pulling data off the DDI API on anything other than an incidental basis. This is not even remotely similar to having a large, API harvested dataset written to persistent storage on the local machine.

I very much understand the appeal of Masterplan's previous approach to the DDI API; it allows a lot of functionality and performance that would be awkward or perhaps unfeasible otherwise. If the author can find a way to game the usage terms and maintain existing functionality, then bravo! Here's hoping this doesn't neuter the valuable features already deveoped!