Orcus said:
I too feel that the d20 stl and OGl are not software friendly. That also was a reservation I had about PCGen. But I didnt list it above since apparently if WotC is working with them, WotC isnt worried about that. I'm going to have to check with Ryan, but it is my firm recollection that Ryan's position was that PCGen was not in compliance and he percieved difficulty in them achieving it in addition to the fact that he saw big problems with software implementation of the licnese in this way. Perhaps a new legal team has come to a different conclusion. But again, I will wait and see. I am not comfortable with the licenses and their interaction with software.
Clark
Clark,
Pardon the earlier post, after weeks of bashing and working our asses off, the toll hit me finally and I took your post as yet another anti-pcgen bash, for that I apologize profusely.
Onto your above post and the previous post...
The biggest hurdle to software and D20/OGL is the data sets... how they're used/maintained/layed out...
I can't speak for any other software except PCGen and E-Tools (I did beta test it)... and both handle data in roughly the same way... Human readable format (regardless of debates about M$ Access or the tags used in PCGen data/list files, they can both be read by a human being and some logical sense be made of them)
The 2nd area is in the realm of HOW the software interacts with the data sets... I'm not going to get into E-Tools about how they do, I've not played with a final release yet... but PCGen I'll (obviously) happily go on about...
The short info is this from Anthony and the WotC legal dept... The 'Interface' (i.e. software itself, code) MUST be dumb to EVERYTHING... it can only report/do what it is told by the list files...
This has been a stumbling block for a great deal of software out there in it's initial design... not faulting any coders out there, just stating most don't think in terms of OGL/D20 compliance when they write characater generators... Bryan, through foresight of sheer dumb Code Monkey luck, thought to have the information in plain text files, manipulating the code.
The code CAN be D20 compliant, but does NOT have to be OGL compliant, because the Data sets MUST be OGL compliant, but can not be D20 compliant... kinda screwy I know, but that's how it works out...
No offense to Ryan, but he's not a WotC employee or spokesman anymore... He may know what's going on inside WotC, or he may not, it is a somewhat large company... but the official word for what is D20/OGL compliant is Anthony's... he's the Brand manager for this stuff, so it's _his_ job, not anyone else's to say yea or nay...
As for an official word from WotC on whether a piece of software is D20 and/or OGL compliant, You can bet that when that software gets that nod, they'll post it to high heaven and back again, and specifically in PCGen's case, since they are going WAY OUT OF THEIR WAY to help us achieve those goals, I'll be pestering them for an 'official public' nod somewhere.
