Get d20 While It's There

Scott_Rouse said:

Well as we have announced more about the GSL I stand corrected. Use of the d20 STL will end on June 6th 2008 as it will be replaced by a d20 GSL. The books and PDFs with the old red and black logo will need to be updated without the logo after 2008.

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Are you saying that after June 6 pdfs of old OGL 3e products sold with the d20 logo will be in breach and WotC will require their removal from sale until the logo is removed?

If so I expect a lot of companies to simply pull pdfs from sale instead of updating them, particularly the ones that are simply scans of old physical books. This will be a lot of work for the thousands of d20 logo'd pdfs that are out there.

It would be easy to update the d20 STL to add a termination date to the availability of the d20 STL for new products so there are no new d20 logo'd products after June 6. This would prevent new OGL products from using the d20 logo but not require a ton of busywork for pdf sellers or loss of available products for consumers.

If this is the case I'm asking as a consumer and D&D player to please push for this.

There are thousands of pdfs of both OGL and non OGL stuff I'm interested in getting. I play D&D and buy a bunch of pdfs monthly. I'd prefer to continue buying d20 books for my D&D games but there are plenty of OGL nond20 logod ones, GURPS, Ars Magica, Rolemaster, White Wolf, etc. that I can get as well if a ton of d20 logo books go away. I'd miss the options of the d20 ones though.

Scott_Rouse said:

To Bacris and Psion,

The license ends in June 2008 so publishers will stop using it at that point. There will be a sell off period through the end of 2008 for publishers with stock in their warehouses. Product that is sold and sitting in a store or distributor is considered sold and fine. There will be no recall of product sitting in the channel.

The major downside is for publishers who have so much stock they can't move it in six months. For those who that is the case I suspect they have larger problems.

PDF sellers will be asked to update their products within that six month time and remove the logo.

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Well that is better than June 6, but I don't have high hopes though for publishers who had DTRPG scan their old stock of 3e books into pdf format for them and don't directly handle the pdfs themselves or who are now mostly out of the business.

Voadam said:

Well that is better than June 6, but I don't have high hopes though for publishers who had DTRPG scan their old stock of 3e books into pdf format for them and don't directly handle the pdfs themselves or who are now mostly out of the business.

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I am not going to pretend that it won't be a lot of work (or at a minimum a pain in the rear) but it may be as simple as opening the PDF file in Photoshop, putting a black square over the logo, and saving the file.

Scott_Rouse said:

The license ends in June 2008 so publishers will stop using it at that point. There will be a sell off period through the end of 2008 for publishers with stock in their warehouses. Product that is sold and sitting in a store or distributor is considered sold and fine. There will be no recall of product sitting in the channel.

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Thanks, Scott, that covers my largest concern.

Most of our printed books are in distribution already, so it shouldn't be an issue, and most of our newer works don't use the d20 logo for this very reason.

This does pose an issue with the d20 license allowing the reference of the PHB / DMG / MM / Epic / Psionic books by name, since that was part of the d20 license... But 6 months is more than fair time to remediate that.

Thanks for clarifying!

This came up in the GSL thread but:

If a company decides to use the GSL, from current statements by Scott and Linae as stated, unless there is some provision to the contrary, if you publish 4e GSL products, you can't sell OGL anymore and continue to publish under the GSL.

So unless I'm mistaken, I see swaths of 3e material disappearing regardless of branding issues.

Its here in the d20 STL:

9. Changes to Terms of the License
Wizards of the Coast may issue updates and/or revisions to this License without prior notice. You will conform in all respects to the updated or revised terms of this License. Subsequent versions of this License will bear a different version number.

Psion said:

This came up in the GSL thread but:

If a company decides to use the GSL, from current statements by Scott and Linae as stated, unless there is some provision to the contrary, if you publish 4e GSL products, you can't sell OGL anymore and continue to publish under the GSL.

So unless I'm mistaken, I see swaths of 3e material disappearing regardless of branding issues.

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That is my understanding as well. Which impacts me as a customer of several publishers, including WotC. It actually creates a bad feeling for me as a customer of WotC, since I won't blame those companies for moving forward. But it would seem to put a huge damper on the ideas of the evergreen PDF.

BSF said:

But it would seem to put a huge damper on the ideas of the evergreen PDF.

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PDFs brought out under a licence which has a limited period will also only be in existence for that limited period.

d20 publishers knew this (or should have done), and could have released their products under the non-revocable OGL instead if they'd wanted to.

There are lots of things about the move to 4th edition which I don't like, but I have no complaints about this particular issue.