PCgen to start charging for Data?!

[isidorus]

I do not agree 3-5 per book is fine! If I take in accounting the PHB, DMG, and splatbooks(7 books) it will equal 21-35 dollars a year. Then if I include MM, MMII, psionics handbook, MOP, Etc(11 books), it comes to 33-55 dollars a year. Then it seems they are talking to other publishers to it could even cost more. I understand they are a business but this reminds of Microsoft and Norton's subscription service, Shudder!

Maybe I have been using Free Software to long, but all this subscription service software bugs me. My biggest question is if I buy the service (which I won't) would I have to repay for the 3.5 updates.

Back to old pen an paper for me, all this money is not worth it.

Regards

Isidorus

 

[BarakO]

Gah! I just read more on the annoucement. $1-5 for ONE YEAR? Hell no. If I buy a WotC book, I get to use it forever. I'm certainly not going to actually pay a subscription to use it in PCGen or E-tools. Let's say I have a dozen that aren't SRD. We'll use $3 as a price tag. That's $36 per year? Nonono. I could well end up paying CMP more for the prodcuts than I did WotC, if I "subscribe" for five years. Plus, if only one person in the group buys a book, everyone can use it.

And If everyone in my group wants to use PCGen, it costs us all that amount (unless we share the files, in which case we'd be stealing). So between the seven of us, we'd be paying more to use the files in PCGen than the actual paper books we originally bought? And more every year afterwards?


- Z a c h

So buy it once and maintain it yourself. It is possible, ask all the people who kept the 2.7.3 files and have them working with 4.+

I know you know how to do it, I've been to your website.

If it's so hard for you to do that, why would you expect to be given that effort for free from a business??? If it's not that hard, just do it.

If you don't want to spend the time doing that, don't cry about having to pay for an update.

Plus, what everyone seems to be ignoring is the fact that we're talking about data that WAS NOT LEGALLY AVAILABLE previously, and now will be.

OGC/OGL content will continue to be developed and added to, and will continue to be distributed with PCGen for free.

To quote JeffQ_UK, a user of the CMP board that seems to understand the options here and summed it up fairly well:

***********************************************
I really can't believe that people cannot understand this...

1)If its OGC / SRD, or developed under the GNUPL it IS and always will be FREE

2) If its the IP of any company they have three choices...
2.1) Release it to the PC-Gen community for free distribution
2.2) Release it to CMP for coding and charged distribution
2.3) Keep it to themselves and force fans to hand code LST files

3) If it's the IP of any company you have FOUR choices
3.1) Hope it gets released free to the PC-Gen community
3.2) Buy it ready formatted from CMP at a cost
3.3) Code it into LST format yourself
3.4) Ignore it and continue to use the SRD content that comes with PC-GEN

I personally can't see the problem with making one of those choices!

***********************************************

 

[isidorus]

I do not either it is just the subscription part that has my gander up really. I no longer use Norton because of it. Now I develop small programs and it is not all that easy, but for some reason I like doing them in C. I understand they are a business, but they were just a community before this and now a re commerical? You need to make money, but the cost for each book added each year gets expensive.

I seen some companies go bust in the free software world on this type of subscription service, I hope they do not. I am still not paying that much money each year.

Geez I only use Microsoft when I do union business, at work or when I really need to make sure a program must compile anywhere. Linux or Bsd's everywhere else. I amy even pay for a powerbook, but I will probably Linux it.

Regards

Izzy

 

[Hardhead]

So buy it once and maintain it yourself. It is possible, ask all the people who kept the 2.7.3 files and have them working with 4.+

I know you know how to do it, I've been to your website.

Yes, I could do it, but most people can't, and will be forced into the yearly update cycle.

If it's so hard for you to do that, why would you expect to be given that effort for free from a business???

I honestly don't know what to say to this one, it seems like such an obvious answer.

Because I paid for it.

If I'm going to pay for the LST files, I'm doing so because I don't want to have to muck around in the LST syntax. I don't expect to have to do even minor coding on a product I bought only one year later.

If I'm going to have to do do coding to keep my files up to date, I might as well start out by coding them myself. Hell, it'll make it a lot easier for me to fix 'em when they get broke if I do that.

I don't mind paying for them. I do mind paying for them every year.


- Z a c h

 

[bloodydrake]

heres my question are the data sets for wotc books going to be available for etools for same price or free?
reason i'm asking is well people already payed retail cost for etools and a lot of custom data has already been done to add the missing prestige classes ect to it as well as forgottenrealms stuff ect.
Would be pretty crappy to have to pay again to get that data.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

So buy it once and maintain it yourself. It is possible, ask all the people who kept the 2.7.3 files and have them working with 4.+

I know you know how to do it, I've been to your website.

If it's so hard for you to do that, why would you expect to be given that effort for free from a business??? If it's not that hard, just do it.

If you don't want to spend the time doing that, don't cry about having to pay for an update.

The problems in updating all extend to your changing of lst syntax and data structures. I am willing to pay for the original entering of the data, but to charge us for fixing problems that you create is wrong. And to fix it yourself its not that simple, most people can't. This is not a viable option for most.

Plus, what everyone seems to be ignoring is the fact that we're talking about data that WAS NOT LEGALLY AVAILABLE previously, and now will be.

Once again this myth is being perpetuated. The PCGen founders claim that 2.7.3 was legal under fair use of the copyright laws. I have never heard either Bryon or Robert claim otherwise. If you can get them to post that thier earlier actions were illegal I will accept that these files are illegal, but not until then.

OGC/OGL content will continue to be developed and added to, and will continue to be distributed with PCGen for free.

With charging for IP from WotC you are setting the precident that 3rd party IP should be charged for as well encouraging all d20 customers to withhold the IP portions of thier products and charge for them as well. There are too many statements that PCGen will always be free to go back on that, but you are doing everything possible to get around the spirit of the statement and becoming what you were founded to stand against.

To quote JeffQ_UK, a user of the CMP board that seems to understand the options here and summed it up fairly well:

***********************************************
I really can't believe that people cannot understand this...

1)If its OGC / SRD, or developed under the GNUPL it IS and always will be FREE

2) If its the IP of any company they have three choices...
2.1) Release it to the PC-Gen community for free distribution
2.2) Release it to CMP for coding and charged distribution
2.3) Keep it to themselves and force fans to hand code LST files

3) If it's the IP of any company you have FOUR choices
3.1) Hope it gets released free to the PC-Gen community
3.2) Buy it ready formatted from CMP at a cost
3.3) Code it into LST format yourself
3.4) Ignore it and continue to use the SRD content that comes with PC-GEN

I personally can't see the problem with making one of those choices!

***********************************************

PCGens founders have always claimed that the Data files were legal under fair use copyright laws. Aditionally 3.2 is not a valid option for most and any help to achieve that is rejected if they find out you are using the information to enter material from your own books.

Additionally the deal was made for undisputed IP material rights in exchange for fixing e-tools. By charging for the PCGen files they are charging the PCGen fan base to fix e-tools. I thought the negotiations were to help the PCGen community, not to gouge the PCGen fan base for as much money as possible. The only costs that need to be covered are the data enty time and formating that data into already free standards. Lets say this takes 40 hours (a conservative estimate) and data entry time is worth $20 an hour (another conservative estimte for data entry) that comes out to $800 a source. At $2 x 400 downloads (Probably a conservative estimate given thier user base) would cover the costs. Anything over this in downloads is pure profit. Updates are the cost of writting 1 or two perl scripts and they will cover all files. There is no way this is worth $1-$5 dollars per year per source for this service.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

heres my question are the data sets for wotc books going to be available for etools for same price or free?
reason i'm asking is well people already payed retail cost for etools and a lot of custom data has already been done to add the missing prestige classes ect to it as well as forgottenrealms stuff ect.
Would be pretty crappy to have to pay again to get that data.

From the mouth of Mynex

Originally posted by Mynex
We didn't actively hunt down sites to shut down with the 2.7.3 files, we only reported them to WotC if/when they were reported to us, and the same applies here. We are not going to actievely seek out any files sites, but we're not going to ignore them if they're pointed out to us.

They have not explicitly stated that they will be charging for e-tools data sets but it is certainly implied in many places. Addionally it sounds like not only will they be charging for the files but will be reporting any trading of user entered information to WotC.

 

[Hardhead]

Well, they've made it perfectly clear they'll be charging for e-tools files. Mynex says on the front page of CMP:

Now onto the crunchy stuff regarding data sets (data sets are the files that PCGen uses and the database enhancements that e-Tools uses).

<snip>

1) The data sets will be made available on CMP's website for a small fee. And by small, we're talking between $1-5.

I can only assume that they'll be stopping the proliferation of fan produced e-tools dbases, or they couldn't possibly get away with charging money for the ones they write.


- Z a c h

 

[TheAuldGrump]

First off let me state that I have no problem with CMP charging a reasonable price for splatbooks and other IP. From what I have read they will continue to update this material, free, for a period of 1 year.

By charging money they also attract companies that are currently unwilling to open their material for the OGL. SSS comes to mind.

Considering that E-Tools was going for $40 (!) at our flgs I don't find spending around $25 for a program that WORKS that bad a deal. And, frankly, I don't think that I will need to purchase all that much material anyway, I don't use Forgotten Realms at all. The speculated Scarred Lands stuff on the other hand....

I also believe that many companies, if not most, will view having their material available free to be a good incentive for folks to buy their commercial products. (I know that in my case the counterpoint was true, when the splatbooks were dropped from PCGen I dropped the splatbooks.)

But looking at the issues:

Do I believe that at the end of that year they will suddenly change all the files to not function with the older version of the program?

No.

Do I think that by subscription they mean that at the end of the year the program will cease to function? (Which I gather Microsoft tried. The folks at Corel thought that MS going to a subscription system was a great idea... For Corel.)

No.

Do I think that in the course of a year the Code Monkeys will iron out the inevetable bugs in the .lst files?

Yes.

This last means that the 'subscription' is most likely a moot point, at least for most groups.

Further:

From what I read they will be offering 'bundle deals' on lst files, for less than the sum of purchasing the files seperately.

Telling websites not to carry files covered by IP is something that they HAVE to do in order to protect IP. Unprotected IP is lost.

My only questions are what books fall where in the 1-5 dollar range listed. Though I suspect that the class books will be at the low end, generic books like Savage Species in the middle and Forgotten Realms at the high end. (No proof, just speculation.) And, when will the various material become available.

I don't know how the Codemonkeys feel about a gaming group sharing a .lst file among themselves. My suspicion is that they will dislike it but not do anything about it - if they even hear about it.

Going by what I've read on several forums I sometimes wonder if I was the only person to delete version 2.7x from my machine when they had issues with IP. But then I only use PCGen to store Player Characters and create NPCs. When the splatbooks were dropped from PCGen I just dropped them from my campaign as well. (The one thing I really miss is the die rolling that was removed from PCGen. On the other hand I use the points system for NPCs anyway, I find that it helps balance things.)

All in all, I intend to shell out my moneys for the material, possibly waiting for bundles as they become available.

My congradulations to CMP for completing what likely was a rather arduous round of negotiations.

The Auld Grump

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Do I believe that at the end of that year they will suddenly change all the files to not function with the older version of the program?

No.

Do I think that by subscription they mean that at the end of the year the program will cease to function? (Which I gather Microsoft tried. The folks at Corel thought that MS going to a subscription system was a great idea... For Corel.)

No.

Do I think that in the course of a year the Code Monkeys will iron out the inevetable bugs in the .lst files?

Yes.

This last means that the 'subscription' is most likely a moot point, at least for most groups.

The problem is not bugs but thier constant restructuring of the data files and changing of the Syntax. In the last 6 months there have been two major changes that invalidated previous data sets. Will the data cease to function, no it will work fine with the version it was sold with, but if you wish to purchase a new source book with the new data structure you will have to repurchase all of your previous sources.