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<blockquote data-quote="Scars Unseen" data-source="post: 8917887" data-attributes="member: 10196">I heavily disagree with this (with a single exception, which I'll get to).&nbsp; Contracts in general are agreements, but the OGL was an open promise to the public in order to safeguard D&amp;D as the authors of 3E saw it against any eventualities that would threaten it in the future, up to and including future corporate interference.&nbsp; Whether or not some or even most of the community ends up preferring 1D&amp;D to previous editions is immaterial.&nbsp; That D&amp;D will technically still exist as a game without the OGL is immaterial.&nbsp; Even if there are people who agree with some or all of the things that WotC/Hasbro are offering in a new OGL, that too is immaterial.The pure and simple matter of the issue is that the OGL was written as a promise to the public to keep D&amp;D openly available via the SRD to anyone wanting to publish, and nothing that is less open than the OGL is ethical within the context of that promise.&nbsp; The one and only acceptable alternative to the OGL is one that makes D&amp;D more open and less subject to future corporate interference.&nbsp; That could take form as an update to the OGL that updates language to match updates the open licenses it was modeled after have gotten in the past couple of decades and nothing else or simply WotC releasing old editions to the public in their entirety via CC licenses. But any renegotiation on what can and can't be done with past SRDs is completely unacceptable, especially when it's not really a negotiation in the first place, but rather a corporation repeatedly trying to weasel word and connive and force an unwanted, unjustified and indefensible result until they find the path of financially acceptably low protest.&nbsp; That's not the kind of fair dealing that can be attributed to a healthy contract.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Scars Unseen, post: 8917887, member: 10196"] I heavily disagree with this (with a single exception, which I'll get to). Contracts in general are agreements, but the OGL was an open promise to the public in order to safeguard D&D [I]as the authors of 3E saw it[/I] against any eventualities that would threaten it in the future, up to and including future corporate interference. Whether or not some or even most of the community ends up preferring 1D&D to previous editions is immaterial. That D&D will technically still exist as a game without the OGL is immaterial. Even if there are people who agree with some or all of the things that WotC/Hasbro are offering in a new OGL, that too is immaterial. The pure and simple matter of the issue is that the OGL was written as a promise to the public to keep D&D openly available via the SRD to anyone wanting to publish, and nothing that is [I]less[/I] open than the OGL is ethical within the context of that promise. The one and only acceptable alternative to the OGL is one that makes D&D [I]more [/I]open and [I]less[/I] subject to future corporate interference. That could take form as an update to the OGL that updates language to match updates the open licenses it was modeled after have gotten in the past couple of decades [I]and nothing else[/I] or simply WotC releasing old editions to the public in their entirety via CC licenses. But any renegotiation on what can and can't be done with past SRDs is completely unacceptable, especially when it's not really a negotiation in the first place, but rather a corporation repeatedly trying to weasel word and connive and force an unwanted, unjustified and indefensible result until they find the path of financially acceptably low protest. That's not the kind of fair dealing that can be attributed to a healthy contract. [/QUOTE]

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