I know that WER and the other tournament management applications aren't open source.
I'd love to start an open source application that can do everything WER and company do, but the challenge is (obviously) interacting with Wizards.

Does anyone know who I could contact about trying to start something like this? I have the programming knowledge to be able to move forward. If I had a WPN login and some permission I could start trying to figure out the API calls that WER does to back-engineer a good front-end.

As much as I hate to put a damper on your enthusiasm, you are not the first person to get this idea. In order for anything like this to work, you would need permission from Wizards of the Coast to interact with their servers. It's not as simple as reverse-engineering the API - Wizards requires that sanctioned events use WER (or in some cases, WLTR), and I'd imagine that they would shut down any other project that tries to upload events, or access the DCI number/sanctioning database.

So, yeah, you'd start by contacting the organized play coordinator at Wizards of the Coast. But it's not going to happen.

This is coming from the person who developed RTools, currently hosts online pairings for ~30-40% of GPs, and (most relevant to here) has zero relationship with WotC on these projects.

Wizards of the Coast is very protective of their proprietary information, and of sensitive player information. (a.k.a. DCI numbers) Much of what you are looking for access to is information that WotC has been locking down further over the past several years, due to privacy laws in the US and their lawyers' interpretations of those laws. (see: #wotcstaff) The access that you're looking for is something that WotC has functionally never given out, and there are no signs of WotC giving such access, nor allowing third parties to use WotC-proprietary information.

Edited Jordan Baker (Aug. 10, 2016 09:08:02 AM)