Important! Interview opportunity - what do you want to know about the GSL?

[Greylock]

I'm a publisher and I have almost 1,000 copies of Denizens of Avadnu sitting in my friends garage.

Sheeesh! THAT's why it took me three danged years to get a copy! And believe me, I tried many times through many avenues to get it. Finally turned up in my mailbox as a Secret Santa gift of all things [this past Christmas - Thanks BillyBeanbag!]. Brand spanking new and beautiful. Must have come straight from your friend's garage.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Oh, alright, I jumped to conclusions too.

There, are you happy now.

ARE YOU? Huh? Huh?



--G

Yes, I'm happy. I'll be even happier if I come home and I find out all the license stuff is straightened out and everyone is happy. No matter how good the news is though, I'm sure there'll be some sort of spin or something that raises people's ire. We'll see what happens...

 

[JVisgaitis]

Sheeesh! THAT's why it took me three danged years to get a copy! And believe me, I tried many times through many avenues to get it. Finally turned up in my mailbox as a Secret Santa gift of all things [this past Christmas - Thanks BillyBeanbag!]. Brand spanking new and beautiful. Must have come straight from your friend's garage.

Three years? You ever go to our website? I hear you can actually use the Internets to buy stuff. I actually remember that order. The excess is at a friend's garage. Your copy come out of the closet right behind me.

 

[Big Mac]

I actually feel kinda bad about the threadjack thing... Thank you though.

You realise that by (accidentally) hijacking the thread you are duty bound to release your wedding video under the OGL!

Congratulations.

In your opinion. To me, it suggests exactly the opposite. They want to make sure that what they decide on is going to be something that weighs the community response. What would you rather?

Option 1: Announcement made right away: "All products need to be destroyed and no publisher can continue to support OGL Systems. Its all GSL or nothing."

Option 2: Several weeks later: "After listenting to the concerns of the community for the past couple weeks, this is what we came up with ________________."

I'll take option 2 every time. You're just over reacting and buying into all of the "Wizards is The Man" crap.

I love that "Wizards is The Man" thing. You are right on the ball there. This is after all a discussion about an RPG system that, when TSR sold it, was totally closed. The fact that 4e is open at all is great. Maybe it isn't as open as 3e, but Wizards executives certainly don't eat people's babies.

Most of my concerns about 4e are connected to their setting reboot policy. I'm not really looking forward to the idea of Forgotten Realms: The Next Generation.

But I do also have some concerns about the infererred policy of trying to force publishers to abandon 3.5. I'm actually wanting to stick with 3.5 (for at least the next 4-5 years) and want to buy up a lot of Wizards of the Coast books. I'd like to continue to buy things that support their product line. (I'm assuming that they want people like me to be their customers. I'm assuming they don't want their 3.5 stock to sit on shelves unsold.)

I am hoping that WotC will do something that enables fans to buy 4e products and make fan-retro conversions (back to 3.5 or earlier D&D rules). I'm hoping for a retro-version of the ESD Conversion Agreement that enables people to buy the new (1 per year) campaign settings that WotC are promising us even if they don't want to use the 4e rules.

And on top of that, I'm hoping that WotC will negotiate a new agreement with MWP, so that 4e customers can continue to buy 3rd edition Dragonlance PDFs and use them with the 4e conversions that Cam Banks has promised to do for Dragonlance Nexus. (I think that an agreement that gives WotC a percentage of royalties and doesn't expire would be fair to both companies and more importantly good for their mutual customers.) Dragonlance goes above the d20 System licence as it is one of TSRs campaign settings and it is very important for WotC to realise that fans will always want (or even need) to get hold of out of print products to check things that are not covered in the new rules.

 

[jmucchiello]

The fact that 4e is open at all is great.

The thing is, it's not open. You can (er, will be able to) obtain a license to 4e material for free. But that is not the same as open. If it were open, they could not stop you from supporting 3.5e. Since they can and they might you can't call it open. Semantics are important, especially in licensing/contracts/legal stuff. You sentence should read, "The fact that 4e will have a free licensing option at all is great." "Open" is not shorthand for "a free licensing option."

That said, I agree with most of what you said.

 

[Big Mac]

The thing is, it's not open. You can (er, will be able to) obtain a license to 4e material for free. But that is not the same as open. If it were open, they could not stop you from supporting 3.5e. Since they can and they might you can't call it open. Semantics are important, especially in licensing/contracts/legal stuff. You sentence should read, "The fact that 4e will have a free licensing option at all is great." "Open" is not shorthand for "a free licensing option."

That said, I agree with most of what you said.

I know that, as I used to be on the OGF mailing lists. I suppose with this forum being full of experts, I should be careful what I say, because it is your duty to nitpick so that I don't confuse a newbie into misunderstanding the law.

I think that WotC have even argued that they "needed" to move away from the OGL because it contained the word "open" and people were not happy that it was a non-open licence using the word "open" in its name.

Thanks for the nit-pick, by the way.

EDIT: By the way if you agree with most of what I said, do you want the OGL wedding video too?

 

[jmucchiello]

I know that, as I used to be on the OGF mailing lists. I suppose with this forum being full of experts, I should be careful what I say, because it is your duty to nitpick so that I don't confuse a newbie into misunderstanding the law.

Well I didn't single you out. I've been doing it to everyone using the word open and GSL.

EDIT: By the way if you agree with most of what I said, do you want the OGL wedding video too?

Sure. But not an OGL wedding night video. That would be a bit too open.

 

[Delta]

I think that WotC have even argued that they "needed" to move away from the OGL because it contained the word "open" and people were not happy that it was a non-open licence using the word "open" in its name.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. The OGL really is open. It's qualified as open by the Open Gaming Foundation ( http://opengamingfoundation.org/licenses.html ).

Maybe you mean how their proposed OGL v.2 (now named the GSL) would not be open?

 

[Pale]

That's exactly what he said, Delta.

 

[Delta]

No, he literally said that "it", the OGL, was a non-open license, which is not the case.