Christoph Stahl's page

Open source licensing is hard. I do not want to get a lawyer over my small program. I think I will ask the paizo licensing team, what the best wat to do this is.

That's going to be a problem. That term will get you under fire with Wizards of the Coast. It's also dishonest because you're NOT D20 compatible. Pathfinder is NOT D20.

I see the problem with d20 belonging to Wizard of the Coast, but the program is indeed compatible with all d20 products and not only with Pathfinder.

At it's core it is very simple: It loads text from a database and prints it to a pdf. The data can be from the D&D SRD or the PRD, or even be homemade.

If your product does not directly reference and require the 3.X rulebooks, and follow the specific requirements of the D20 (as opposed to OGL) license, and is not licensed by Wizards of the Coast, you can't list it as D20 compatible.

Ok I see that.

I think I will parse though my source code and replace every instance of "Pathfinder" with "PFRPG", which is not trademarked. For the "D20 problem", I am sure to find an appropriate term. Thank you all for your input.

Here's the ten dollar question... what is so special about the data files in question that you can't include them in your own program?

This has two reasons. The datafiles are parsed spells from the prd. Firstly I want the user to be able to update the datafiles, without updating the program, secondly I do not know how compatible the OGL is with the apache2 license. When I distribute the files with my program, everything distributed would fall under the apache2 license. To avoid mixing these liceses, I chose to split the data from the program.

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Are you advertising it as compatible with pathfinder? Because that would breach clause 7 of the OGL without a separate, standalone license from Paizo.

I do not advertise it as pathfinder compatible, but generally as d20 compatible. I only use the Term "Pathfinder" to cite the source of the spells.

Thank you.

But my original intent was to know, that when

a) My Program does not ship with any data and
b) The data I provide only uses material gained from the PRD (and other, but non paizo sources)

then I can license my program under an open source license (which grants everyone the right so sell my software), and license the data under OGL. And I do not need to agree to the Community Use Policy or the Pathfinder Compatibility License.

Hello Community,

I have a question about the Community Use Policy and the OGL. I am developing a program, that can generate a Spellbook PDF from a selection of Spells. For the Spells, I parsed the PRD. I do not use Pathfinder material outside of the material published in the PRD.

In addition to that, I do not ship the data with the program but the user has to download the data files from am server in the internet, so the data files are licensed under the OGL, and my program can be licensed under an Open Source License (apache2).

Am I right to asume, that I do NOT need to agree to the Communiy Use Policy? Since the Open Source License explicitly allows selling the program, this would contradict the non-commercial aspect of the Community Use Policy.