How Is There Still PCGen?

[Twin Rose]

Re: Let me step in here please

So much discussion over PCGen, what about Twin rose and Tablesmith and the like, where's the 'hot debate' over them, some of them charge.

The hot debate comes in several forms. Usually users from other boards coming onto our support forums and trying to slam us.

I entered into a pair licenses, referred to as the D20 Stl and the OGL. These licenses list what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable, for products of any flavor - and include limits on what is not acceptable. They list the rules for inclusion of copyright, and when there is potential breach, the matter is discussed with people at wizards of the coast or within the Open Gaming Foundation to remedy the breach. If it is still not remedied by this 'polite' manner, than it becomes an official warning for 30 days - after which, logos and rights will be terminated.

The FAQs you refer to in regards to "Human readable format" apply to the Open Gaming License. Open Content does not mean you can use it however you want - you have to follow the rules.

"Hot debates" about Campaign Suite are discussed, worked, and remedied if there is a problem or potential problem.

The license any OGL and/or D20 programmer or publisher enters into insures that they are - in fact - legal until found in violation. Not entering into such a license, such as saying, "If anyone has a problem with us, we'll stop, but otherwise we'll keep going" means it's shady ground and someone can accuse you of being illegal, someone else can accuse you of being legal, and noone is really right.

Being bound by the license means that there is no threat of anyone losing their intellectual property rights. In intellectual property law, you are bound to actively defend your rights. By not doing so for one person, they can - in fact - lose their rights. The license gives them gaurauntee that they can pull the license at any time, and they can very actively defend it.

Last, but not least, the "hot debate" about Twin Rose and DM's Familiar and others has gone under heavy review at Wizard's of the Coast and I've been very active with them in trying to establish the legal bounds of using their mechanics, phrases, and other content in a software product.

I think that the comparison here was largely unfair, as you have not entered into any sort of Agreement with Wizards of the Coast, and we maintain our own forums where such debates occur. Whether or not we receive payment for our work, and our professions, is also not in issue. The OGL and D20STL make no such distinction, and WOTC is not a company to say, "You can't make money off of our licenses!" Rather, saying, "You can use our stuff, but use it the way -we- dictate."

 

[smetzger]

Re: Let me step in here please

6) We have contacted ALL the publishers we have, even a few we do not yet. Some later than others and for that I do apologize. The reason for that lateness is due to protocols being recently (last few months) being instituted to make sure we do things correctly and politely with the publishers.

You may have contacted all the publishers. However, not all the publishers are copyright holders. For example, take the Netbook of Feats. You may have contacted the NetBook council, however, they do not have the legal right to give you permission to use the material without the use of the OGC license or the d20 license. I realize that getting permission from all the copyright holders would be difficult, but it is something which you have not done.

That being said, I don't mind that you are using my material.

4) Wizards has said in the past that any software character creation tool must have the mechanics in a 'Human Readable Format'. Yes? PCGen does. They're called list files. And all they are, are text files given the extension .lst instead of .txt or .doc or .whatever. And that is ALL they've said about software so far.

Technically this is not true. The OGL FAQ says that you need to allow people to extract any OGC material that you include. It suggests that one way to do this is to include the data in human readable format that your program can process. And besides since PCGen does not use the OGL or d20 license it does not have to comply with this.

 

[merton_monk]

PCGen's Philosophy

Put simply, we are not OGL or d20 compliant, so the requirements for those licenses are completely irrelevant. We have been taking steps toward that direction which is why we contact all the publishers for the permission - particularly PI permission for names of items - which is completely unnecessary if we don't ever become OGL or d20 compliant. However, gaining permission from a company/group/individual is the professionally polite thing to do and is a good way to start a dialog even if we don't ever become OGL and/or D20 compliant.

We are under copyright/trademark laws. Under Fair Use we can include mechanics (the "crunchy bits"), we cannot include "flavor text" verbatim as that would violate copyright. We satisfy TradeMarks by giving proper attribution - everywhere in PCGen it is very easy to determine from what book/group/URL/individual an item came from. We do this for a number of reasons:
1. to satisfy trademark requirements
2. to help out d20 publishers who put out wonderful material - we want people to know who created that class/feat/spell that they like and where they can go to purchase it and find other products by that same author!
3. we want to make it easy for our users to remember which of their books they need to look up the details about it in. All DMs will want to know the details about something (more than PCGen provides) and having a reference in hand is a typical requirement.

The way this balances for us is that PCGen is useful as a character generator and mainenance application because it handles all the math. It gives you all the options you have, let's you know what you qualify for and what you don't qualify for. In this way it really lowers the learning curve on using new d20 material (especially for those compeltely new to d20/3e!). It also works as free marketing for all the d20 publishers who don't have to worry that our product will make theirs unnecessary. I have received numerous email from people and seen posts on our yahoo message board that many groups will only allow players to use books which PCGen supports in their character generation. This means that publishers who let us include their material in our application are generating more sales than they would have this includes a number of people who have bought Wotc books because they're in PCGen!). No one has *not* purchased a book because it was not necessary due to the information included in PCGen. That means we're not costing any publisher a dime.

I have contacted Wotc several times seeking their permission to specifically include their books in PCGen. Again - technically it isn't an absolute necessity, but for many reasons it's the right thing to do. I have never tried to "fly under the radar". I have exchanged email with Ryan Dancey, and with other Wotc employess after his departure. None of them have indicated that Wotc has a problem of any kind with PCGen. I'd like to gain their official permission, but they're obviously very reticent to do that. It isn't necessary to have their official permission, but I'd be very happy to enter into negotiations with them in order to obtain it.

I don't expect PCGen to affect E-Tools sales at all. Our purposes have some overlap, but our audiences are very different. Our audience is completely on-line, and due to our cross-platform nature we have a large userbase among non-Windows users. E-Tools will be distributed nation-wide in Wotc retail stores for Windows-only and will have instant name recognition among those who are not on-line. E-Tools is focused on the core rulebooks, will run on Windows (so it *should* run somewhat faster than PCGen which is java based) and will do what a lot of gamers need. At around $30 it's not like it's going to break anyone's budget. We're free (no budget necessary!) and we support somewhere around 60 sources at last count. Not everyone needs that versatility. The learning curve for using PCGen is probably higher than E-Tools, though we're slowly lowering that - Mynex's great work on the documentation should go a long way to rectify that! The GUI has taken big steps forward and we're constantly working on optimizing the speed as much as we can - moving to Java 1.4 in the next month or so should help tremendously. The comparisons between PCGen/E-Tools and all the other character generators are inevitable - in the case of retail generators the users will vote with their checkbook. I haven't figured out how people vote for us, except that lots keep helping to enter the data files and we have publishers ask about getting their stuff entered. Without that kind of vote of support, we wouldn't have gotten to where we are today!

I think that should about cover all the issues.

Bryan McRoberts
Benevolent Dictator and Chief Code Monkey of PCGen

 

[drothgery]

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that despite (and possibly because of) everything the PCGen people have said, it's on incredibly shaky legal ground, and if Hasbro and WotC thought it was worth the effort, the project would probably get shut down. You're working off of some highly flawed legal assumptions.

1) The notion that game mechanics can't be copyrighted has never been tested in court, as far as I know. If someone published the d20 SRD without including the OGL and d20 STL, I think it would be hard to find a judge and/or jury that said they didn't violate WotC's copyrights.

2) PCGen's status as an open source/freeware product does not protect it any way from lawsuits or exempt it from copyright laws. It may limit the damages you could be sued for, but that's about it.

3) It's not at all clear that including game mechanics descriptions in a text file for use in a generator program is fair use, even if posting the exact same text here would be. In any case, recent legislation (most notably the Digital Millenium Copyright Act) has severely limited 'fair use' rights.

 

[kingpaul]

1) The notion that game mechanics can't be copyrighted has never been tested in court, as far as I know. If someone published the d20 SRD without including the OGL and d20 STL, I think it would be hard to find a judge and/or jury that said they didn't violate WotC's copyrights.

Actually, IIRC, you don't need to include the d20 STL with a work. You need to abide by it if you slap the d20 logo on the work, however. This pretty much means a minimum 5% OGC, no character generation rules, and no rules on what to do with experience.

However, you do need to include, and abide by, the OGL if you use OGC.

 

[Nine Hands]

In anticipation of E-Tools coming out, I was checking out PCGen and astonished by the claims it makes. According to their site, they have data in there from the splatbooks (not open) and Star Wars (not open, and licensed by someone else.) And they encourage donations!

Am I missing something, how are these guys getting away with this? Is it just that no-one at Wizards cares or is it that the app doesn't do what it says it does?

Seems a pretty popular program, I'd be surprised if it managed to 'fly under the radar.'

So Matt when are you going to give permission for PCGen to include your works...hmm?

 

[Fractalwave]

Re: PCGen's Philosophy

I've read threads in these forums for some time now and this one is the one that actually got me to register and post...go figure. This post is not a flame, it's an explanation of sorts and hopefully points to some useful websites for those who want to look up a few things. And...IANAL. I just do business.

Herein lies the problem that is easiest to see...

Put simply, we are not OGL or d20 compliant, so the requirements for those licenses are completely irrelevant.

Bryan McRoberts
Benevolent Dictator and Chief Code Monkey of PCGen

I think you should probably reread the OGL. There's only been one version of the OGL to my knowledge and this is the link. http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/OGLv1.0a.rtf

The OGL is distributed with all OGC and OGC is licensed under the OGL, therefore if OGC is used the OGL applies. PCGen contains OGC, does it not? Section 3 of the OGL says

3.Offer and Acceptance: By Using the Open Game Content You indicate Your acceptance of the terms of this License.

This is the short explanation. Unless PCGen entered into a separate license with each and every copyright owner of the OGC they include, be it in an alpha, beta or 'stable' production version, they are subject to the OGL.

I also think that several people are confusing PI and IP. PI, product identity, is defined by the OGL in section 1 (e):

"Product Identity" means product and product line names, logos and identifying marks including trade dress; artifacts; creatures characters; stories, storylines, plots, thematic elements, dialogue, incidents, language, artwork, symbols, designs, depictions, likenesses, formats, poses, concepts, themes and graphic, photographic and other visual or audio representations; names and descriptions of characters, spells, enchantments, personalities, teams, personas, likenesses and special abilities; places, locations, environments, creatures, equipment, magical or supernatural abilities or effects, logos, symbols, or graphic designs; and any other trademark or registered trademark clearly identified as Product identity by the owner of the Product Identity, and which specifically excludes the Open Game Content

IP is intellectual property and is covered by copyright, patent and trademark laws to name a few. Intellectual property is everything that is the product of human innovation and creativity. If you create something new, then you own the intellectual property. For example, you write a story then you copyright it because you as the creator of the intellectual property own those rights.

Everything, open or not is IP. Not everything is PI. Clear as mud yet?

Under Fair Use we can include mechanics (the "crunchy bits"), we cannot include "flavor text" verbatim as that would violate copyright.

Bryan McRoberts
Benevolent Dictator and Chief Code Monkey of PCGen

Consult a lawyer on this one too. From http://whatiscopyright.org/

Fair use or fair practice is utilization of a portion of a copyrighted work "as is" for purposes of parody, news reporting, research and education about such copyrighted work without the permission of the author. Use of copyrighted works, or portions thereof, for any other purpose is not deemed fair use, so be careful! That includes copying text or scanning pictures from postcards, magazines, books or any other work.

To my knowledge, PCGen isn't using the information or data for the acceptable fair use purposes listed above. Find someone to look up cases for you in case that site is out of date but it was last updated on May 4, 2002.

From section 1 (c) of the OGL:

"Distribute" means to reproduce, license, rent, lease, sell, broadcast, publicly display, transmit or otherwise distribute

PCGen definitely distributes OGC. Distribution of a product has absolutely nothing to do with whether there's a price attached to it.

Also, a good lawyer could easily argue violation of the d20stl simply from PCGen's repeated use of the term "d20" in marketing materials. Note that marketing includes websites.

I suggest that anyone who wants to learn more should subscribe to the mailing lists at the open gaming foundation website. http://www.opengamingfoundation.org There are threads in there that discuss whether things are considered derivative as well as whether it's possible for the OGL to be compatible with any other open source license without violating the OGL. I would think these would be very informative.

I've not even touched on copyrights and trademarks. Just do a google search on copyright and trademark. You'll find lots of information.

Fractalwave
aka Dee Peterson

 

[smetzger]

Re: Re: PCGen's Philosophy

I think you should probably reread the OGL. There's only been one version of the OGL to my knowledge and this is the link. http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/OGLv1.0a.rtf

The OGL is distributed with all OGC and OGC is licensed under the OGL, therefore if OGC is used the OGL applies. PCGen contains OGC, does it not? Section 3 of the OGL says This is the short explanation. Unless PCGen entered into a separate license with each and every copyright owner of the OGC they include, be it in an alpha, beta or 'stable' production version, they are subject to the OGL.

Your other statements about fair use and stuff may be correct. However, this one is wrong. Just because you use information that is OGC/OGL does not mean that you must abide by the license. If you do not use the OGL license then the rules for use come under the copyright rules. It is possible to use material that is OGC/OGL without the actual license and obey copyright rules. For instance if you own the copyright you can publish however you want to publish. You can also give permission to others to use your material. If you own the rights to the material you can do what you want with it.

In short I think that PCGen is on shaky legal ground. Since they are not using the OGL or the d20 license a copyright holder could at any time seek legal action against them. But most D&D websites (including this one) and Jamis' Generators are on the same shaky ground. For example, hardly anyone publishes free modules under d20 or the OGL. Morrus is very defensive about the OGC content yet he does have a whole lot of sidetreks available for download that have no licensing information in them. Although, Jamis gives credit and notes who the different copyright holders are for his NPC generator, he does not in fact use the OGL or d20 license.

So, there are lots of online sources that do not comply with OGL or d20. I myself am writing D&D software that I am pretty sure will not use the OGL or d20 license.

 

[D'karr]

And the question is

Who gives a crap?

If WOTC wants to pull the plug, who gives a crap?

People complaining and whining about it being OGL or d20 compliant need to get a life.

All these legal experts, quoting this law or that law, just chaff my ass. Get a frigging life.

The guys doing the PCGen files are doing a great service. If WOTC decides they don't want the files distributed then let WOTC take action. The PCGen files have already said that they will pull it if WOTC wants them to.

As far as I've seen, nobody here works for WOTC and is just whining because somebody might or might not be doing something quasi-legal.

If you have such hard felt opinions about it don't support it. In an online forum nobody gives a crap about your opinion anyway. The same way that nobody gives a crap about my opinion.

Flame if you want because I don't give a crap.

 

[Draconis Imperium]

Re: And the question is

Who gives a crap?

If WOTC wants to pull the plug, who gives a crap?

People complaining and whining about it being OGL or d20 compliant need to get a life.

All these legal experts, quoting this law or that law, just chaff my ass. Get a frigging life.

The guys doing the PCGen files are doing a great service. If WOTC decides they don't want the files distributed then let WOTC take action. The PCGen files have already said that they will pull it if WOTC wants them to.

As far as I've seen, nobody here works for WOTC and is just whining because somebody might or might not be doing something quasi-legal.

If you have such hard felt opinions about it don't support it. In an online forum nobody gives a crap about your opinion anyway. The same way that nobody gives a crap about my opinion.

Flame if you want because I don't give a crap.

Halleluah! and AMEN!