Blackmoor Vituperative

Part of the problem with PCGen, and the core of what has enabled third parties to create patches for PCGen which both violate PCGen’s license and break PCGen itself, is the setting for “PCGen System Files” under “Preferences”.

It was a mistake for PCGen to allow third-parties to override portions of PCGen’s system files — particularly when PCGen itself is a LGPL product, and the third-party system files may not be. A third party who overwrites PCGen’s system files with non-(L)GPL code would be flagrantly violating the license (sections 5 and 6, specifically). It is obviously not in PCGen’s best interests to encourage violation of the license under which PCGen is released. If someone wants to create a derivative work of PCGen, they should fork the project and release their own application, not back-door the LGPL by patching PCGen.

License issues aside, allowing third-parties to override PCGen’s system files will inevitably result in incompatible versions of PCGen running around, some of which have standard system files and some of which don’t, causing user confusion and data set incompatibility. A bad scene, any way you look at it. Bad for PCGen, bad for PCGen’s users, bad for everyone.

(Incidentally, PCGen should be released under the GPL, not the LGPL: the LGPL is not appropriate for a stand-alone application like PCGen. But that’s kind of beside the point.)

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the PCGen copyright owner(s) to make sure that third parties comply with the license under which PCGen is released. If they choose not to do so (and it appears that they are perfectly happy releasing PCGen under an inappropriate license, and having third parties flagrantly violate PCGen’s license), then there is nothing that anyone else can do about it.

C’est la vie.

The best that users of PCGen can do is be forewarned: do not install any third-party product which requires overriding the PCGen system files. It will cause nothing but problems.

In the last few days, we’ve been treated to some pretty disgusting defenses of the looting in New Orleans. Pundit after pundit has said that black people are being portrayed as criminals and looters. That’s fatuous and offensive. Criminals and looters have been portrayed as criminals and looters, and victims have been protrayed as victims. Most of them, predators and victims alike, happen to be black simply because of the demographics of the stricken area. I wish people would stop defending scumbags just because their ancestors happen to have come from a particular spot on the planet. That’s despicable. Some of the people taking food from grocery stores and so forth were doing what was necessary to survive: I have absolutely no problems with that. No sane person would. I’d be right there doing the same thing, if it were me and my family. What I have a problem with is soulless dirtbags like this preying on people who can’t defend themselves, stealing food and supplies from people who are just as much in need as themselves, if not more so.

Managers at the Covenant Home nursing center were prepared to cope with power outages and supply shortages following Hurricane Katrina. They weren’t ready for looters.

The nursing home lost its bus after the driver surrendered it to carjackers. Groups of people then drove by the center, shouting to residents, “Get out!”

On Wednesday, 80 residents, most of them in wheelchairs, were evacuated to other nursing homes in the state.

“We had excellent plans. We had enough food for 10 days,” said Peggy Hoffman, the home’s executive director. “Now we’ll have to equip our department heads with guns and teach them how to shoot.”

(from Yahoo! News, New Orleans Cops Ordered Back To Streets

Personally, I would have no problem if the National Guard had been given the order to shoot scumbags stealing supplies from a nursing home, regardless of where their ancestors came from — because that’s irrelevant. This is the USA: you are responsible for your own actions. Your ancestry provides you neither privilege nor excuses.

I am also tired of ignoramuses like Bill Maher and George Carlin banging their “blame Bush” drum over and over. Did Bush and FEMA and the rest of the federal peanut gallery screw up? Obviously. But so did the governors of Mississippi and Louisiana, and so did the mayor of New Orleans. They all screwed up. Using this tragedy to ride a partisan hobby horse is just contemptible. Contemptible.

A friend of mine who is a photographer passed along these images, supposedly from hurricane Katrina. Pretty breathtaking stuff.

http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000765_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000766_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000767_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000768_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000769_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000770_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000771_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000772_big.jpg
http://members.sparedollar.com/MsNumbers/i000773_big[1].jpg

They aren’t actually from Katrina, of course. These images are actually photographs of tornadoes taken by storm chaser Mike Hollingshead in southwest Iowa in late spring 2004. Most of them are viewable on the 2004 Digital Photos section of his web site (scroll about halfway down the page).

I’ve received a response from the people at Code Monkey Publishing with regard to their nonstandard data sets. I asked why the CMP data sets were incompatible with every other available data set, and if there was a way to make them compatible. In short:

… yes, that is exactly the case, and is done intentionally. …

I’m sorry if that’s not the answer you wanted to hear, I’m sorry if you don’t like that answer, but that’s the answer.

(from W. Robert Reed III, aka “Mynex “, co-owner of Code Monkey Publishing)

So the bottom line is that the Code Monkey Publishing data sets do not work correctly with PCGen, and they aren’t going to. So I’ve wasted my money. More importantly, I’ve wasted my time. Furthermore, if I want to use PCGen to create characters using feats and spells that aren’t part of the OGL, I’ll have to code them by hand, even though I paid CMP so that I wouldn’t have to do that. I don’t like that answer, but that’s the answer.

Do not waste your money or your time on data sets from Code Monkey Publishing.

News from the Free Software Foundation is that the next version of the GPL may include penalties against those who patent software or use DRM in their products.

Specifically, the new GNU GPL (General Public License) may contain a patent retaliation clause. …

Other open-source licenses already do, noted Larry Rosen, founding partner of a partner in the law firm Rosenlaw & Einschlag and author of “Open-Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law.”

“I’m pleased that FSF is going to add patent defense to its new GPL 3. Many other open-source licenses have such provisions already,” said Rosen.

(from eWeek, New GPL Will Contain Patent Protection

I’m not sure adding penalties will actually accompish anything, though. If anything, I think they might chill the widespread adoption of open source software. Which is a shame, because, in principle, I think they’re a great idea: as Greve said, software patents and DRM are a menace to society.

I recently returned to D&D, and thus to PCGen, after a hiatus of a couple of years. PCGen 5.8.0 is out, and it is a good improvement over previous versions. I recommend it. However, I do not recommend that anyone buy the “official” core rules and “complete” series of data sets from Code Monkey Publishing (aka “CMP”). Not only are they a pain in the ass to install (it took me a half-dozen tries), they make every other PCGen data set completely inaccessible.

It burns me up, because I actually paid for these (while PCGen itself, which works just fine, is free).

I am looking into a way to make these Code Monkey data sets interoperable with the rest of PCGen. It may not even be possible, in which case I’ll be deleting them and PCGen, and re-installing PCGen fresh, without the incompatible Code Monkey Publishing data sets. If I do find a way to make the CMP data sets work with the rest of PCGen, I’ll let you know.

Until then, I urge you in the strongest possible terms not to buy any data sets from Code Monkey Publishing.

All OpenOffice.org source code and binaries (executable files) up to and including OpenOffice.org 2 Beta 2 are licensed under both the LGPL and SISSL. Effective 2 September 2005, all code in the 2.0 codeline will be licensed exclusively under the LGPL. All future versions of OpenOffice.org, beyond OpenOffice.org 2 Beta 2, will thus be released under the LGPL only. The change in licensing implicitly affects all languages and platforms in which OpenOffice.org is distributed.

(from OpenOffice.org, License Simplification FAQ)

This goes along with the OSI initiative to trim the ridiculous number of OSI-approved open source licenses down from 50 or so to around 3, which I wrote about back in February. At this rate, it’ll be the year 2026 before they reach their goal. Still, kudos to Sun for taking that scary step of altering their license.

I updated the site statistics. More hackers whose IPs have been logged and blocked, and more weird search terms which led people here. It seems that the Fantanas are more popular than Windows. Who’d have guessed?

I have learned several things from Hurricane Katrina:

1. When the government announces a mandatory evacuation, get the hell out of Dodge.
2. The federal government is just as incompetent at responding to a crisis as it is at everything else.
3. The National Guard should never leave American soil. They should be here to defend, protect, and serve Americans, not killing and getting killed by people halfway around the world so that we can save a few cents on a barrel on oil. (That’s what the Army and Marines are for.)
4. People are really, really stupid. Rather than learning anything useful from the Federal response to Katrina (see #2, for example), they seize on ridiculous conspiracy theories. I’d believe that the heads of FEMA and the Department Of Homeland Security were robots wearing humans skins before I’d give credence to the theory that the hurricane response was so embarassingly awful because most of the victims were black. Of course, the people who spout this nonsense are the same people who believe:
   1. that “global warming” exists,
   2. that it caused Hurricane Katrina,
   3. that human action is to blame for it,
   4. that we have to Do Something about it, and
   5. that we can Do Something about it.
5. Law-abiding people should always have a supply of weapons and ammuntion in watertight containers. Why? Looters.

Donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

In a spectacular demonstration of amazingly good sense, the commonwealth of Massachusetts has proposed a plan to phase out office productivity applications from Microsoft and other providers in favor of those based on “open” standards, including the recently approved OpenDocument standard.

The state’s move is a boost to the relatively new standard, whose full name is the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications. It’s also a blow to Microsoft, which dominates the office application market and has found government customers to be among those most aggressively considering open-source alternatives.

The OpenDocument format, which was ratified as a standard in May, covers office applications, including word processors, spreadsheets and charts.

It is the default format for the OpenOffice open-source suite of applications and is supported in suites by Novell and Sun Microsystems and by IBM in its Workplace products.

(from ZDNet, Massachusetts to adopt ‘open’ desktop)

Microsoft responded with the usual FUD, of course:

Alan Yates, Microsoft’s general manager of Information Worker business strategy, criticized the Massachusetts proposal, saying it was “confusing”. …

Yates reiterated the Microsoft does not intend to natively support the OpenDocument format, which he said was very specific to the OpenOffice 2.0 open-source suite.

He said Microsoft can provide the same data interoperability and archiving that Massachusetts is pursuing because Microsoft publishes the XML schema of its Office applications and makes available through a royalty free license.

(from ZDNet, Massachusetts to adopt ‘open’ desktop)

This is terrific news, I heartily commend the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and I hope that Virginia follows their lead. It kind of reminds me of that poster with the little white mouse and the hawk, though. You know the one: the hawk is swooping down, and the mouse is about to be caught and eaten, but the mouse is giving the hawk the finger. At the top of the poster is the word “DEFIANCE”.