Publishers Opinion Of PCGen

[Archimedes]

Re: calm down folks!

<soapbox>
Could folks please calm down? I've read slams against the PCGen team, slams against Clark, slams against Purple People Eaters...well, maybe not the last, but I hope my point is recognized. If you read something that riles you up, please don't respond immediately. Wait a while, and see if you're still irritated over it. I find this thread interesting, and don't want the SysMods to close it down due to a brewing flame war.
</soapbox>

Yes, you are correct.

I certainly still believe that Clark was being rude, but I probably shouldn't have lashed out in a public forum. By doing so I've committed a similar transgression. I should have sent a private e-mail instead.

I apologize to everyone on this thread for losing my temper.

Sam

 

[EOL]

As far as I can tell, there are ONLY two things that the publishers have a legal leg to stand on in a desire to rid pcgen of their material by legal force.

Those are:
Any descriptions that are quoted verbatim from said d20 sourcebook
Any proper names used - though those have to be properly trademarked (Hense WotC not granting people the right to call Mordainkain's Disjuncture by it's full D&D name, but instead by the name Mord's Disjuncture.

I think you would find that doing it such that you didn't violate any IP laws would be far, far, far more torturous and difficult than complying with the OGL/D20 licenses.

And as far as quoting up to 1/10 You still have to abide by fair use restrictions, like parody, scholarly works, or news stories. If I took 1/10 of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and published it as a whole new (and perhaps readable ) book I would get sued so fast the ink would still be drying.

 

[Archimedes]

Possibly. The poster that started the thread, KNightcrawler has the following in his sig:

"Knightcrawler
PCGen LST Monkey"

Is LST Monkey the same as groupie? If so, then I guess it was someone in the outer circle.

There's over 45 credited List Monkeys. Maybe he's the head monkey, maybe he's not.

Sam

 

[Fast Learner]

Clark certainly didn't lose any respect in my eyes, nor any goodwill. But then I follow the OGF lists and, as a result of his posts, my respect for Clark is very high indeed.

Just to further reinforce the "game mechanics are not copyrightable" note, here's a quote from the US Copyright Office's PDF on the matter:

The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.

Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.

The entire PDF can be found at:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.pdf

That doesn't mean WOTC couldn't successfully sue you for using the "particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form" without their permission, mind you. Just that the system itself isn't copyrightable, only patentable, and history has shown that it's very difficult to get a game patent unless you (a) have some kind of mechanism involved, like Hungry, Hungry Hippos, say, or (b) you come up with something that's truly new and unique, like collectible and tradeable cards as part of a game system (where two players battle, etc.), like WOTC did for M:TG.

Just FYI.

 

[Grazzt]

There's over 45 credited List Monkeys. Maybe he's the head monkey, maybe he's not.

Sam

I guess being an LST Monkey is better than being an LSD Monkey.

 

[Leopold]

I dont see it as vindictive. I see it as being honest. PCGen asked the publisher's opinions in this forum. That is what they are getting.

They posted and said they were/are now compliant. But by the banner/image Clark found on their site that mentioned D&D and Star Wars by name they were not (as you cannot refer to such things according to the license). That is sloppiness.

I understand the "Oops we missed something....", BUT if you want to be 100% compliant, ya gotta be 100% compliant and that means checking everything including the website where you advert your material.

Trust me, when WotC asked me to begin posting using the OGL, I went through every page on the Creature Catalog and made sure it was 100% compliant before posting a copy of the license and before announcing that I was in fact 100% compliant (which I am now according to the legal peeps at WotC).

considering we are NOT a company. Considering we HAVE been working on the code nonstop for the past few weeks with WOTC to make our code in compliance, not once had we stopped and went to the web page to take a look at it to change it or make it in accordance with copyright law.

Sorry, we goofed, how many more times do you want us to apologize? Hey we f**ked up, we take the hit, just tell us once and don't rub our faces in it. Everyone makes mistakes, and thinking that one misquoted source on a web page is gonna bring down george lucas and his legions of lawyers is ridiculous. Cut us some slack.

ALL of us do this on our spare time, lots of us have real life wives, husbands, significant others, kids, dogs, the white picket fence to paint or the kangaroos to attend to. we miss some small things, yes it DOES happen. Like when clark had the wrong date when the judges guild stuff came out? OOPS! no biggy we overlooked it the masses did.

Things happen, and things get fixed. The big thing has ALWAYS been the code, the application, the data files. That is our bread and butter, THAT is what we are looking for the publishers opinion on. THAT is what we are trying to get a feel for in the community for what we have done. THAT is what we are trying desperately hard for and finnally seeing the fruits of our hard and diligent labor coming to a head.

Folks, if you see a typo in something or a misquoted source on a web page, take it off line. Common curtosey dicates that at least.

As for constructive criticism, it has been dished out in droves and each of it has been read, analyzed and taken it for what it was: crticism, notes, and responses. I thank everyone for posting and look forward to reading more on what everyone has to say, and I know I am not alone in reading this thread..

 

[Leopold]

I'm not sure if that's really what we're seeing though. Isn't it possible that the original poster is just an outer circle volunteer and initiated this whole thing independantly of the core PCGen team? I don't know for certain, so I can't say they've really asked for this.

Sam

you are correct sir, but in the end all of us are cogs on the great wheel that spins. all of us are simple servants in the greater machine that is PCGen.

The information gleaned and produced here has been something that has brewing for a while and it needed to be said and released. If anything this is a primer for copyright/licesning 101..

 

[Knightcrawler]

Questions

Okay I see I need to actually say something now. Yes I started this thread for my own benefit, information. I was unable to attend GenCon this year so I thought I'd post and ask the publishers opinions. None of the "inner circle" knew of it.

When people started coming back from GenCon they all had what sounded like very good results to report. The only thing was that the information that was let out on the Yahoo group was often vague. Now I know some of this is because of the ongoing talks with WotC, but I wanted to see if I could get more information. Hence this post.

I definitely got more than I had bargained for initially. All the reports I had read initially about GenCon said that it went swimmingly. So when so many negatives started coming out in the posts on this thread, I was a bit taken a back.

Now the current discusion about OGL/D20 I think is very enlightening and helpful. All the talks about the licenses had been turning my brain to mush. So I definitely want the thread to stay open.

As to the legal issues, I am not a lawyer so I can't really say. I thank those of you that are defending PCGen but remember a couple of things. Yes, PCGen might be in the right, we might have the law on our side and we might win a case if it actually went to court. But to what end? None of us have the money to hire lawyers to defend us through a protracted court case. WotC has lawyers and money plenty to throw at PCGen if they really wanted to. Also all those "mights" are really dangerous, we could lose. And the only thing that a court case would do is to cause bad blood between the various parties involved.

I may not like some of the things that are being said about PCGen and there are some people that seem to be a bit more belligerent than others. But if nothing else this thread is enlightening, so lets try to keep it civil. The escalating sharp retorts is what got this thread off to a bad start.

Oh and for those of you that asked. I may not be a "inner circle member" but I'm not just some yahoo using PCGen who decided to just post on a whim. I earned the title LST MOnkey by coding various sources so I do know a little bit about PCGen. Looking for morte information and feedback from the publishers was my way of finding ways of making more of a contribution to PCGen. I thought that the opinions of the publishers could be helpful, and I think they are.

So for those of you who are defending us, Thank You. And for all you nay sayers, Wait And See.

 

[Leopold]

There's over 45 credited List Monkeys. Maybe he's the head monkey, maybe he's not.

Sam

monkies are ranked in order of simiam evolution (don't quote me this is a guess and i am not jane pauley). You have:

chimp
lemur
monkey
gibbon
baboon
orangatang
Silverback


Whereas silverback is the highest order one can attain and there is maybe 1 or 2 silverbacks for the various areas: lst files, documenation, coding, etc.

Overall it's just some silly moniker we made up to have fun with things and bring jovial humor to the fact we were all silly code 'monkies' deep down.

 

[Leopold]

I guess being an LST Monkey is better than being an LSD Monkey.

bad faux monkey! No code monkey treats for YOU!!!