Publishers Opinion Of PCGen

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Callypsa said:
I fail to see how you can confuse an opinion with an official statement, especially when it is clearly labeled as either/or.

Because it isn't always clearly labeled. When a disclaimer is given, some people will ignore the disclaimer and pass the information along as official. Unfortunate, but true. Case in point is your own post from above.

Callypsa said:
Wow, no wonder you were confused. I definitely sheds more light on the subject. The first two are completely incorrect. I mean, totally, and completely. I'm not sure who posted them, or where you read them, but I'll bet they weren't Bryan or Mynex, or any other part of the inner circle of PCGen. That's the problem with an all volunteer project. You can't tell people what to do/say, and they go out and say something they think is true, but it's not, because they don't know all the facts. There are a lot of PCGen people out there saying things, but they don't always know what's going on. Bryan, above all, is the one heading up the project, and I'm sure he never claimed compliancy. Ditto with Mynex.

If people that do not speak officially for PCGen want to help PCGen they should be more careful, as you try to be. Since some people will give a disclaimer, but still include incorrect information, people who do not speak for PCGen should discourage themselves from posting on the issues.

Again, I know you mean well but I think you underestimate how damaging it can be despite having posted above to just one of many examples of the damage. I would like to see PCGen do well. I don't think that PCGen should have to confine my source of official PCGen information to 'Emails only' but non-official opinions make that nigh impossible.
 

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As such, anything posted would naturally be the _opinion_ of the poster, unless labeled otherwise.

Actually, if I see "PCGen" in your sig I am going to assume you are speaking for the group. Unless told otherwise.

Clark
 

Orcus said:
Actually, if I see "PCGen" in your sig I am going to assume you are speaking for the group. Unless told otherwise.

Which is one reason why I, even though I could possibly be considered one of the 'inner circle' (whatever that means) don't have pcgen in my sig.

If I ever do make an 'Official Statement', I will make it very clear that I am doing so. (I will however spout my opinions on anything and everything given anything even resembling an invitation to do so. :)

/Jonas
 

Orcus said:
designate a person to speak on behalf of the project and to interact with publishers. It certainly wasnt clear to me.

We do seem to be heading in that direction, given that Mynex (and Tir?) have been handling most of the direct contacts with publishers lately. I dunno if it's official, but I guess it does make everyones lives easier. (Well, except Mynex and Tir's, but, hey, they volunteered for it. Or were they volunteered? :)

/Jonas
 

jujutsunerd said:


We do seem to be heading in that direction, given that Mynex (and Tir?) have been handling most of the direct contacts with publishers lately. I dunno if it's official, but I guess it does make everyones lives easier. (Well, except Mynex and Tir's, but, hey, they volunteered for it. Or were they volunteered? :)

/Jonas


mynex, tir, and myself were contacting most of the publishers. I have been regelated back down the PR ladder to a simple helper in the software board and posting some updates on the project at hand here as since I have been an ENWorlder long before I started with PCGen and taken on a bigger role within the project.


Are my words gospel for PCGen? No. There are only 2 people that I can confirm are the true and ultimate authority within the group and their word is 'cannon': Mynex and Bryan. And Bryan is Mynex's boss regardless of what he says ;).

So does that clear things up a bit? Whatever most of us have posted are gleaned from converstations within the group and postings that have been done and said by either bryan or mynex.
 

Leopold said:
Are my words gospel for PCGen? No. There are only 2 people that I can confirm are the true and ultimate authority within the group and their word is 'cannon': Mynex and Bryan. And Bryan is Mynex's boss regardless of what he says ;).

So does that clear things up a bit? Whatever most of us have posted are gleaned from converstations within the group and postings that have been done and said by either bryan or mynex.

As long as you have a sig that states you are representative of PCGen, some people will take it to mean that you have the authority to speak for them. Not everyone will read this thread and know the difference.

Despite reading what you have just posted, what is truly official needs to come from Mynex or Bryan. That will clear it up for people who read this thread. As said above, anyone seeing your sig will assume that you speak for PCGen in other instances when you forget to add a disclaimer or people choose to ignore your disclaimer.

This is a case in point of this whole problem. You say that you do not speak for them, then proceded to speak for them in an unofficial capacity. If I am not supposed to take what you say as gospel, why say anything at all? Is it possible that what you are saying is not correct? If I decide to ignore your disclaimer, and it is incorrect, how do you take it back if I do not return to read a correction in this thread? Is Tyr, Bryan?

I doubt you have any intention of damaging PCGen but you do need to understand that it can happen.
 
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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...
 

Hastursaur said:

Despite reading what you have just posted, what is truly official needs to come from Mynex or Bryan. That will clear it up for people who read this thread.

Ask and you shall recieve! :D

See my last post (not that you can miss it, it's HUGE! :p)
 

Mynex said:
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...

Okay, did I miss anything? Don't think so... but please ask away if I did...

When you write PHB, I assume you mean the Player's Handbook. Do you mean that you are using the PHB to check if list/data files comply with the OGL?
 

If your copyright position is valid, I still dont get how it is in the USER's best interests for you to go OGL.

Under your "copyright only, non-OGL" theory, you get all the D&D content, all the splat books, all the d20 books and you can have randomly generated stats.

Under the OGL, you only get the SRD, you have to license people's PI, you cant have the splat books without WOTC permission and you cant ever have randomly generated stats.

How is that better for the user?

Clark
 

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