Zub said:
From what I could gather, it seemed like the list monkey group was a closed off place where they continued to work on files they didn't have permission too. Was this some sort of private club where they could dick around "perfecting" list files while all the time they were still using them privately? That hardly seems fair to me. I can't tell you how many times I've asked for help on how to implement features and was shut down because the feature came came from a book that PCGen didn't support. And to find out from reading the BoD minutes, that they had these list files available for themselves the whole time for their personal use, is kind of aggravating.
Yes, it was a closed group. The reason it was a closed group was because Tir was trying to address the concerns of some of the LST Monkeys about their work being used before they were completed. This had much to do with OGL and making sure that there were no violations of non-OGC before they went out. This is a concern for publishers too, because you could accidentally release something that is NOT OGC out into the wild and accidentally call it OGC, inadvertently allowing many others to wrongfully use material in a manner they thought was legal. The publisher then lose out because they have to defend their material.
The other concerns, rightfully or not, were the feelings of distrust many of the LST Monkeys have toward CMP. There was a period of time that that list completely shut down with no posts when people discovered that Bryan was back on the list.
Believe me, most of the partial work being housed there were full of holes and problems as works in progress. A backlog of complete files, however, did occur where there were not enough people to QA the work and not enough OGL Monkeys to review the work. I have the feeling that many in the PCGen community forgot about the volunteerism necessary to keep the various sections moving. It is why I stepped in when I did to assist the LST Monkeys. Heck, even I want to have cool source material added to PCGen, but I wanted to contribute instead of waiting.
It was the feeling of Tir that we should not release stuff into the wild without being complete and without being completely combed through for OGL compliance and to make sure that only OGC declared content was in the files. His overriding concern was to avoid any legal troubles or violate any trust publishers had with PCGen that would inhibit them from cooperating with PCGen in the future.
I'm of the idea that you can put out files, as long as they pass the OGL Monkeys. Sure, the files will not be complete and there may be a bunch of bugs, but that's the burden you bare with the "release early, release often" mentality. Besides, they're free files so you get what you pay for ;-)
While there are many concerns about conflict of interests and no guidelines for third-party organizations, the big blow up has to do with the comments made in the BoD log where the BoD wanted to take LST files from someone that had expressed that they didn't want their material used in such a manner and had not submitted it to PCGen. Then there was the attempt (not known if it was actually attempted or if just mentioned in the log) that the BoD go in and grab the LST files in progress at the closed group. Again, such files were not yet handed over to PCGen. On the other side, the PCGen BoD felt that the group was inherently owned by PCGen and thus, the files were already submitted. There is a load of legalities involved with OGL, LGPL, copyright, and other such things. That's another argument.
