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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tomBitonti" data-source="post: 4687487" data-attributes="member: 13107">I wholly agree.  The referent "suits" is pejorative, and must be avoided in civil and reasoned discussion.If I may put this back onto the track that I find most interesting: First, I do believe that many people, when viewing the GSL, are astonished, and, after working through their initial reaction, come to wonder how the GSL came about.  Second, to provide a partial answer to my own question, I am willing to accept that the GSL arose in part as an inevitable consequence of fundamental features of 4E and its productization.  However, while that sense of consequence is useful for further analysis, one's wonderment is not diminished, but is transformed into a new question: What reasoning went into the choice of features for 4E, and how it has been turned into a product.  In addition, if the GSL is in part an inevitable consequence, that leaves features of the GSL which are free choices.  For example, allowance for change and for termination, and the prohibition of product lines that support different versions of the product.  The question in regards to these features remains: What thinking went into the selection of these choices?  And: Who came up with these ideas?Further, this allows a new question to be asked: When the features of 4E (and its productization) were selected, what thought was put into the consequences, such as to the GSL.  I can think of at least one other consequence which I find worthy of note.  That is, the decision to maintain a strong online presence, including a database, character, monster, and encounter builders (not all there, but the obvious extension of current work), and power cards as a product, all lead to a suppression of similar efforts by the fan community.   Now, while copyright provides a mechanism for that suppression, the fan community seems to be served with many fewer products than might otherwise be available.  I find at least arguable the notion that allowing fan created utilities, or even allowing for for profit items, and to use them as a farm for best-of-breed ideas, might be a better model to follow.  In the case of for profit items, I do not see how WotC should not have a strong competitive advantage in this area.Thx!TomB</blockquote>

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