The real value of Linux and many other open source products is not how much they have provided free beer software to individual users, but how they have reduced infrastructure costs for largely for-profit enterprises.
Likewise the real promise of PCGen is not in providing only open source content on open source software to GM's and players. The real promise is in providing a largely non-viral FOSS generic automated character generator system to publishers of both closed and open source RPG systems. The LGPL 2.1 is sufficiently non-viral.
The goal should not be to provide free content to end users (though there is no need to abandon that goal). The goal should, instead, be to provide FOSS generic configurable character generation software to publishers, so that at little additional cost, and with a low learning curve publishers can give away or sell IP to end users. This will benefit the publishers (who we like) since they will have an additional product to market, and the players, who can avoid memorizing character generation rules. It will bring more resources into the product as publishers need to improve the core LGPL 2.1 product. At the same time, products that PCGen now provides for free to end users can be expected to remain free.
As far as I can tell there is nothing preventing any publisher from providing and character generation using PCGen and keep the publisher's IP private--unless the architecture is closely coupled requiring any new character generation system to muck with the LGPL internals of the program.
Posted by: trent.shipley@gmail.com
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