What's up with PCGen???

[soulcatcher]

That arguement doen't hold water. Going to the movies was never free and then started charging people to go. Though I do understand the basis of your point. The unique situation here is that PCGen started for free. A group of good souls volunteered their time to create an awesome program for their friends and fellow gaming community. Would it be ok now for me to create lst files and share them with my friends? I think the answer would be yes. So at what point is someone violating WoTC intellectual rights? After sharing free files with 10 people, a 1000 people, a million people? As long as no one is making money on the program use of these books, no one is losing money. PCGen and other code monkeys were and still are volunteering their time and sharing with a broader community. No one was getting hurt when this was all free. The people getting hurt now are those that spend their money on the books and have no programming experience and have no disposable income left to purchase datasets.

It's not our choice. It's not CMP's choice. WotC made that call, and we have no legal choice but to follow it. It's possible we would actually win in court, as creating data sets from their books is very likely not a copyright violation - but none of us have the money to fight tht battle - a battle that as far as I know was inevitable so long as pcgen shipped WotC's non OGL content.

By in large, most of us agree with you - but we have no choice. And so Rob and Bryan started CMP - and did so because that was the only way pcgen would ever again see Tome and Blood et al.

 

[Nine Hands]

You are correct, I seem to be having a source error. I have all the sources loaded but PCGen is telling that in order to load a new character I need to have the sources loaded.




That arguement doen't hold water. Going to the movies was never free and then started charging people to go. Though I do understand the basis of your point. The unique situation here is that PCGen started for free. A group of good souls volunteered their time to create an awesome program for their friends and fellow gaming community. Would it be ok now for me to create lst files and share them with my friends? I think the answer would be yes. So at what point is someone violating WoTC intellectual rights? After sharing free files with 10 people, a 1000 people, a million people? As long as no one is making money on the program use of these books, no one is losing money. PCGen and other code monkeys were and still are volunteering their time and sharing with a broader community. No one was getting hurt when this was all free. The people getting hurt now are those that spend their money on the books and have no programming experience and have no disposable income left to purchase datasets.

Just remember that PCGen is a OGL complaint piece of software. Therefore it MUST comply by the OGL. The OGL specifically states that you can not include PI without permission. Since most of the WotC books are not even OGL, they can not legally be included. This is where CMP comes in. They have the legal permission to make WotC data sets.

On top of this Bryan has stated many times that is a company does not want PCGen to include a specific product (OGL or not) that PCGen will not. This was stated back at the beginning of the project and IMO still holds true to this day. WotC asked PCGen to remove thier products and the PCGen team snapped into action. Both as a show of good faith and to be legally compliant. Somewhere in those discussions CMP was born (I am not certain of this, but I have been involved in enough PCGen discussions with Bryan, Mynex and Lone Jedi to understand what has gone on).

I find it amusing that people complained that the datasets are not available freely. Whoever is creating them is putting thier own personal time and effort into the creation of these sets. They are NOT easy and it is time consuming. I don't have the money yet to purchase any CMP data sets, but I plan on buying when I get some capital. Considering that you could get 6 or 7 data sets for the price of a book, just cut back on your RPG purchases for a little while.

Lastly, the permission to use WotC material (and these data sets are pretty verbose from what I have heard) is NOT FREE. It had to have cost a bundle to get WotC's permission. This puts CMP in the same boat as Kenzer Co and Soverign Press. They have to sell a product just to recoup the cost of licensing, web hosting, etc. Heck, maybe they can even make a profit while their at it.

 

[kingpaul]

But way back when PCGen was on version 2, before WoTC threatened the existence of PCGen, there was no viable difference between PCGen and CMP. Most of use thought CMP put out PCGen. It then seemed to use that CMP entered into a coercive relationship with WoTC, whereby WoTC said that CMP could continue to make PCGen as long as CMP fixed E-Tools and started charging people for the datasets for PCGen. A lot of use felt betrayed that CMP entered into this relationship.

Alright, here is a quote from Bryan "Merton Monk" McRoberts, Benevolent Dictator of PCGen and co-founder of CMP

We had our chat with Wotc at GenCon after version 2.7.3, which is the last release to have the splatbooks in them. We had just released version 3.0 for GenCon, but the splatbook data wasn't in it because we hadn't been able to get an official permission from Wotc. We became OGL/D20 compliant with the release of 4.0 on 9/11/2002. CMP didn't actually begin operation until February or March of 2003, though we existed on paper in December of 2002. CMP has never stopped any data from becoming available in PCGen or caused any data to be removed from PCGen.

 

[kingpaul]

You are correct, I seem to be having a source error. I have all the sources loaded but PCGen is telling that in order to load a new character I need to have the sources loaded.

In that case, I suggest you go to PCGen's main Y! group and submit a post asking about your problem. Ther are many folks there who can help you out.

 

[kingpaul]

Just remember that PCGen is a OGL complaint piece of software.

Not quite. The code is LGPL, the data is OGL. An important distinction to be made.

 

[Nylanfs]

Originally Posted by antpasq
That arguement doen't hold water. Going to the movies was never free and then started charging people to go. Though I do understand the basis of your point. The unique situation here is that PCGen started for free. A group of good souls volunteered their time to create an awesome program for their friends and fellow gaming community. Would it be ok now for me to create lst files and share them with my friends? I think the answer would be yes. So at what point is someone violating WoTC intellectual rights? After sharing free files with 10 people, a 1000 people, a million people? As long as no one is making money on the program use of these books, no one is losing money. PCGen and other code monkeys were and still are volunteering their time and sharing with a broader community. No one was getting hurt when this was all free. The people getting hurt now are those that spend their money on the books and have no programming experience and have no disposable income left to purchase datasets.

Actually PCGen never recieved permission to publish the datasets for all the WotC non-OGL stuff (splatbooks, OA, FR stuff). The datasets were done and then released under the (admittantly mistaken) impression that WotC wouldn't have a problem. Bryan and Mynex were always trying to get ahold of Anthony Valterra to make sure it was okay, but they could never get ahold of each other

Then came GenCon '02 when they finally were able to get a chance to sit down and talk with him about it and WotC said that they didn't want that stuff being released for free. (And what ever you may have heard WotC never did send Bryan a official C&D order). They said that PCGen had to be OGL compliant and that then negotiations could take place about the non-OGL books. It took (I think) 40 days for PCGen to become OGL compliant, and the PCGen BoD decided to go ahead and make it's self d20 compliant also just to prove we could. If I'm wrong about how long it took I'm sure somebody else will correct me.

After that was done Bryan and Mynex and Lone Jedi sat down with WotC and started negotiations with them about the non-OGL booksets. And CMP was formed because as a brink&morter company WotC felt more comfortable dealing with another legal entity as opposed to the loose group of volenteers that PCGen is. Remember PCGen isn't a "legal" entity, it's just an open source group. And those negotiations cost money and the permissions cost money so the datasets HAVE to cost something. And the fact that the datasets were re-built from the ground up you had to pay the people that re-did those.

Note: I was not involved with above said meetings. But I was at GenCon '02 and got most of my information fairly close to the sources so it's a real close approximation of what happened.

 

[Nine Hands]

Actually PCGen never recieved permission to publish the datasets for all the WotC non-OGL stuff (splatbooks, OA, FR stuff). The datasets were done and then released under the (admittantly mistaken) impression that WotC wouldn't have a problem. Bryan and Mynex were always trying to get ahold of Anthony Valterra to make sure it was okay, but they could never get ahold of each other

Then came GenCon '02 when they finally were able to get a chance to sit down and talk with him about it and WotC said that they didn't want that stuff being released for free. (And what ever you may have heard WotC never did send Bryan a official C&D order). They said that PCGen had to be OGL compliant and that then negotiations could take place about the non-OGL books. It took (I think) 40 days for PCGen to become OGL compliant, and the PCGen BoD decided to go ahead and make it's self d20 compliant also just to prove we could. If I'm wrong about how long it took I'm sure somebody else will correct me.

After that was done Bryan and Mynex and Lone Jedi sat down with WotC and started negotiations with them about the non-OGL booksets. And CMP was formed because as a brink&morter company WotC felt more comfortable dealing with another legal entity as opposed to the loose group of volenteers that PCGen is. Remember PCGen isn't a "legal" entity, it's just an open source group. And those negotiations cost money and the permissions cost money so the datasets HAVE to cost something. And the fact that the datasets were re-built from the ground up you had to pay the people that re-did those.

Note: I was not involved with above said meetings. But I was at GenCon '02 and got most of my information fairly close to the sources so it's a real close approximation of what happened.

I agree with Paul. I was with Bryan, Mynex and others prior to their meeting with Anthony Valterra at GenCon 02. After the meeting, we were chatting outside the convention center about the proposed changes. I think the gaming community should appreciate the amount of effort that Bryan, Mynex, Lone Jedi and others have put into this project. A project that initially was done for free. If someone can make a little capital off of this, then great. More power to them.

 

[herald]

As a person who has met and discussed these programs with Bryan, Mynex, Lone Jedi (via message boards and very briefly at Gencon) I can tell that they are very proud of PCGEN. It was presented at Gencon Indy and shown just how powerful it can be.

I don't quite understand how it can be percieved that one can "steal code" from PCGEN and then take that information and put it in eTools. eTools has a hard wired front end over a Access 2000 Data Base. Nothing in that code even comes close to being OGL. PCGEN is Java, and is dependant on lst files. I just don't think that you can mix and match programing styles that easily, especially since CMP has to try and untangle alot of programing spagetti in eTools.

Another thing that seems like a kick in the teeth is the fact that everyone seems upset that CMP contacted WOTC to do a for profit job on creating (correcting) a program like eTools. There is nothing wrong with people asking for adaquite compinsation for the work that they do. IMHO Just because you decide to volunteer, doesn't mean that everone else should too.

 

[Mynex]

Another thing that seems like a kick in the teeth is the fact that everyone seems upset that CMP contacted WOTC to do a for profit job on creating (correcting) a program like eTools.

Actually, funny enough, we didn't go to WotC to ask to fix e-Tools. They asked us. Specifically Anythony Valterra (when he was still there).

Bryan and I had gone to WotC headquarters to 'pitch' PCGen to try and get the non-OGL stuff back into PCGen... Before we had that meeting, we had a pleasant dinner/evening with several publishers (Can't rem the place, but they had a kicking ceeg-arr room. )... During the Dinner Anthony asked me if I thought we could fix e-Tools. Without a heartbeat passing I said yes. Silly me

After he wandered away, then I had to pick up my jaw from the ground... Gadzooks, if I'd know then what I know now about that code base... *shudder*

I'd probably still have said yes, but I would've had a lot less surprises in store for me and for the coders that try to untangle that spaghetti!

But regardless of who came to who, we still wound up with fixing it (to the best of the capability it can handle at any rate)... And yes, CMP is a licensee of WotC, has to be, not just for the data set permissions, but to even work on e-Tools.

There's been a lot of flack directed at CMP, a lot of people not understanding the differences, but we've tried to make it clear to people... all people need to do is ask a question. We're perfectly willing to answer anything that doesn't touch on internal company affairs (contracts, accounting, the usual company private stuff).

 

[antpasq]

Everyone: thank you.
I feel more informed now about the state of affairs with PCGen/CMP.
I also appreciate the patience and first-hand knowledge of those involved in the
evolution of PCGen. I just hope at the end-of-the-day our community has a dynamic program that allows us to continue to enjoy the games that we love.