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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 1823049" data-attributes="member: 10913">I would like to raise the question of whether it is desirable to freely publish OGC. I think there is no argument that it's legal (assuming no PI or closed content is distributed). And the ethical arguments are, well, it seems to me each has its own ethics (for the record, I am generally in favor of free republishing of OGC). But on a purely selfish basis, do we want to? I think all of us here would like there to be more OGC, and of better quality, and for publishers to keep publishing new books and products. I also think many of us would like to have all this content in an accessible manner, electronically. The question I'm trying to raise is whether freely publishing OGC is benefital to this end.I personally think that it is, but only after a singnificant time has elapsed for example. Most books don't sell much past a certain point, and so after say six months the publisher has made about all the profit he can from the work (as have the retailers; don't discount any step in the purchase chain!). At this stage I think having free OGC from the book is not detrimental, and can even increase sales as a form of promotion.Also, I think it is not desirable to republish stuff that is open if the product can be purchased electronically for cheap. For example Atlas Games is in the habit of publishing out-of-print books as fairly-cheap PDFs. I'd be less inclined to republish these products' OGC for free as anyone that wants the material can just purchase it. That said, there are benefits to having a free or OGC-only source, so I'm not sure here.Last, I think it especially benefitial to publish works that have crippled OGC, i.e. OGC that is so mixed up with bad designations (in violation of the OGL! That frankly annoys me) or PI so as to be very hard to extract. By providing a firm OGC source for such content the republisher opens it up for the use of the community at large.</blockquote>

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