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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5711453" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I remember that discussion too. It certainly is a good long-range vision. Probably pretty tricky to make it all work, but they could get there eventually.I'm dubious they'll create a way to publish stuff for other people to use and do anything like promoting stuff to official status or rating it. Not that those are bad ideas, but they're certainly a legal/community relations hairball. If they leave ownership of the game element in the hands of its author, then they lose control of the game as it actually exists (vs whatever the published rules are). If they assert IP rights over each element people put in that doesn't sit well with the community either, and it also obligates them to defend those rights when they have little to no idea where they came from or what 3rd party material might overlap with them. It also kills any DMCA safe harbor they might otherwise assert on user-submissions. Basically for a commercial game like D&D working under standard accepted IP rules the legal and creative headaches might simply outweigh the benefits in their thinking. At least until someone does it all without them and they aren't left with a choice. Honestly I think the funny thing is that the OGL was way ahead of its time. It actually burned WotC when they used it, but something like the GSL they use now will be wholly inappropriate to what will likely exist 10 years from now, when an OGL type license probably make huge sense and their business model will be collecting subscription payments to run community game support and some basic editorial direction instead of selling books and other gewgaws. They should have used something like GSL on 3e and something like OGL might be the ticket for whatever edition is the thing in 2015 and on, by which time this whole vision could be realized.</blockquote>

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