Orcus said:
Actually, if I see "PCGen" in your sig I am going to assume you are speaking for the group. Unless told otherwise.
Clark
RL Strikes again! *sigh* sorry to take a while to get back to everyone here...
Clark, in short, unless it comes from Bryan or Myself, or people we specifically say so, it's not official.
At the moment only Bryan and I officially speak for PCGen... of course Bryan has absolute final say in all things... but he's busy coding up complaincy issues and bugs in general atm, so you get me.
To address some other people's concerns expressed...
We will be going through every list file, every bit of code, every bit of the web site, and every bit of documentation in short order, to make sure everything is completely up to date and legit... this may take a couple weeks as we are all volunteers, but I don't expect it to take much longer than that...
Once we have that all up to snuff, and while we're checking it out, Wizards - Anthony and his SRD assistant have graciously offered to check over PCGen for us. This isn't hand holding or wasting their time... Mostly it is questions about what the code should/can, shouldn't/can't do... and that bit is not clearly defined in the OGL/D20 license...
As for official words about the past - PCGen is and has been within copyright laws. This is from a copyright and software specialist, as well as a few words on it from one of the lawyers who wrote the OGL. As someone else noted, OGL is a subset of copyright laws, it doesn't supplant them. And please, if you wish to argue this point, then let's start a new thread and have any/all lawyers willing to address questions state so and then we can all have a giant Q&A session. Regardless of what anyone may believe, this is the position we have stated and are completely behind.
Now, we HAVE been moving to full OGL compliancy for the last year because we wanted to. Why so long? Well, we're volunteers, we've had a lot of changes over the last year in people coding, procedures, getting bugs and functionality correct, etc. Most people that work on PCGen ARE _Code Writers_, with family, children etc... and trying to figure out how the OGL/D20 license works in/with/around software is something that has been slow going... and to head off the next question - 'How can you say after 2 weeks that you are/near compliancy if a year wasn't enough?" - Simple, it's been a year of slow steady direction to that... about 85-90% of the issues had already been resolved, and the remaining ones were due to be addressed soon... We initially were not going to go for the D20 route, but after conversation with Anthony at GenCon, decided that would be in our USERS best interests in the long run. No, Anthony did NOT promise us ANYTHING if we became fully OGL/D20 compliant, he said we would talk about it IF and WHEN PCGen was fully in compliance with both things... there's a lot of if's to achieve before we get to that point, but we're trying in good faith to get there.
So the last 2 weeks has been code mostly for D20 compliance, with only clearly showing what was IP/PI code missing (Which is now handled by being clearly underlined in the UI, and an addition of a tag in the list files that will make this underlining happen inside PCGen). The last bits of the code should be ready tonight or tomorrow...
Now... the list/data files are a seperate issue from the code, and that's what most people seem to have taken exception too... well, we are using the PHB as the test case, to make sure everything is covered, so most of the other sources haven't been gone over completely yet. As soon as the PHB passes it's tests and gets the nod, then we'll have a set sample to use and scripting a conversion for the older list files will take care of about 95% of the issues with list/data files... the remaining 5% is all hand work at this time...
Oh, Dealing with publishers... there will be 2 or 3 of us that will be contacting publishers for updated/corrected Section 15's (for the OGL license we display), to gain permission to include materials, and to work with a publisher once the list files are ready for inclusion for the publisher to look over and rubber stamp for inclusion (This was a solution we were trying to implement about 6 mos ago, but finally clamped down on about a month before GenCon)...
Of course, as always, Bryan McRoberts is the final arbitrator, contact, and all around good monkey, benevolent dictator for PCGen.
Okay, did I miss anything? Don't think so... but please ask away if I did...