Is the Unearthed Arcana SRD online?

[Piratecat]

Gently, gang. Deep breaths.

 

[Setanta]

@barsoomcore

Now, if you want to play the imaginary "Closed 4E", then yes, your choices will be limited. But your 3E choices will remain every bit as broad as they are today.

Right, but with if the imaginary closed 4E is good? Then I would have to choose.

This has all come down to a question of which is the better way to judge other people's actions: with morality or legality. And the truth is that a free society can only be built by using legality. A legal code is in fact a moral document, just one that's been dispossessed from any particular person's expression.

That's all true, but I believe there are ethics and courtesy beyond the law. As a quick example, would you consider every frivolous lawsuit filed to be ethical? I don't, but if you do, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

How is it possible that somebody who reads that statement, understands it and acts in accordance with it is behaving unethically? No explanation has been offered for this notion other than:
1. I think it's mean.
2. It will hurt the industry.
The former depends on an assumption about the publisher's desires that, in the absence of evidence for any particular release, is unsupportable. The latter is unsupported by any evidence so far submitted.

I'm mainly concerned with #2. No publisher has gone on record claiming #1, but that's partly because they'd look lame given the lack of a legal leg to stand on, so it would be hard to come up with evidence to support #1. I believe there are publishers who feel that way though. You could consider Chris Pramas' request referenced by Bendris to be evidence, or not. It doesn't really matter. We're not going to have enough there for 'proof' one way or another.

As for #2, sure, it's speculation that this behaviour will hurt the industry, but I haven't seen anything to make me think it's illogical speculation. We've seen one publisher speculate that it might hurt his sales. If he perceives it might, chances are others do as well. If a publisher perceives something as being a threat to sales, isn't it logical to assume they might look for ways to avoid it? What if that publisher is WotC, clearly the publisher in the best position to avoid releasing OGC, and clearly the one that would hurt the D20 world the most if they stopped supporting the OGL. It just happens to be a WotC product that started this whole discussion. Thus, I'm concerned.

 

[barsoomcore]

Thanks, PK.

*hands out cookies to everyone*

We can all agree that cookies are good, can't we? Even if redistributing them is unethical?

 

[Setanta]

@Bendris Noulg

You may want to go back the the beginning of this thread and take some notes; for instance, dispite my personal disliking of AC as a game designer, I've never villified him in this thread. At most, I indicated that his opinion is not an official statement by way of WotC.

As noted in my reply to barsoomcore above, it was mainly Nikolai, but you did say Andy's comments put him in a bad light. That's not quite villifying him, but it's more flak than I think he deserves for stating his opinion on the matter.

And I'm saying that the concept of courtesy is widely varied. Is it *right* to release something as OGC and then complain when it actually gets treated like OGC?

Point taken.

No, you must deal with the fact that it is the OGL, not myself or anyone else, that is against your stance. 1b is a clear example of it. (Which, of course, would be why you and JohnRTroy never seem to want to discuss matters of the OGL itself but rather voice forth some unwritten morality play that has nothing to do with the facts of the matter.)

Please don't group me with JohnRTroy. We may on the surface be on the same side of this discussion, but he's come out with some moral judgments, which I have not (or at least not intended to- please see the next paragraph before responding to that). While I wouldn't copy UA onto a website, I don't pass any sort of judgment on someone wanting to do so, and I've stated that I understand why you want to. My concern here has always been that doing so will create a perception among publishers, most notably WotC, that producing OGC leads to lost sales as the work is given away for free.

I've said I don't think it's right to distribute UA's OGC for free. I don't mean 'right' in a moral way, but that it's bad for the game because it might discourage publishers from producing more OGC. That's my only concern. If I knew it would not affect how publishers view OGC in the future, I certainly wouldn't care at all if you copied all OGC ever produced onto your website, then packaged it into a pdf and gave it away on rpgnow.

Oh, then you accept the fact that "Public Display" includes web pages?

Could you please accept that the fact that I've stated many times that what you want to do is fair ground under the terms of the OGL? Yes, it says you can post all the OGC in UA on a website and distribute it for free; I've never implied otherwise.

Note the tone of Andy's post. Then click the link to the GR boards and read the tone of Chris Pramas' post. Then give yourself 5 minutes to consider not why Andy's been villified (by individuals other than myself) but why Chris hasn't been?

I've read the post at GR's boards. I think Chris has every right to say he'd appreciate it if people don't give his work away. Again, perfectly legal for them to it, he just said he'd appreciate it if they don't. He's not whining or doing anything inappropriate, just saying he'd appreciate it if that didn't happen. If that guy goes ahead and makes a skull and bones free download, and Chris thinks it ends up hurting their sales, do you think he might change his policy of making just about everything GR produces OGC? Obviously I can't speak for Chris, but I know how I'd feel if I was in his shoes. Is it good for fans of GR's work that they make their stuff OGC? GR is a great company in terms of making pretty much everything open content, even stuff most companies would make PI. Anyone who would question Chris over his attitude toward the OGL isn't paying attention.

Well, other than perhaps Contempt charges...

IANAL, but as mentioned in my earlier reply to barsoomcore, people have actually gotten off on the "but I was driving safely" defense here in California. Like it or not.

Sure, as long as it's understood that distributing OGC != breaking the law.

I never said or implied otherwise.

Agreed, but rather besides the point. However, it is interesting to note that the PH, DMG, MM, MotP, and ELH all have price tags, too.

Right, but WotC waited some time after their release before adding those to the SRD. For all we know, WotC will add UA later in the year. I've never complained about the d20exchange and its six month waiting policy.

No, what I mean is that values, ethics, and morality are subjective from the point of the individual. What you feel is morally right may not be the same as what I view as morally right. That is why this debate is at a deadlock: Your stance is based entirely on your own personal views of the matter, which are obviously opposed by different personal views.

That's what I hoped you meant (we've gotten this far without insults, I hoped that hadn't changed). Anyway, the fact that I wouldn't copy OGC to a website or publication without first asking the publisher is irrelevant (I'm sure you wholeheartedly agree, no need to post it). What is relevant is that you think it's morally fine to transcribe UA onto your website, and the OGL clearly says that's legal. However, is it the right thing to do? Will it end up hurting the gaming community? I think it might, so I'd prefer you don't do it. That's all I'm saying. I'm not calling you or anyone else here a bad person or whatever.

And I was being facecious. Your point?

OK. I couldn't tell without the inflection in your voice, er, I mean any smilies. Anyway, I think we can drop that one.

To which I still don't think it is. I don't think 4E will be closed content, and if it is, it will be a mistake on WotC's part.

I hope you're right (about them not releasing it as closed content). I disagree about it being a mistake on their part. It would be pretty trivial for them to come out with 4E and a whole new OGL, maybe called ORPGL or something, that simply has more restrictive language, and less information in the SRD. I wouldn't like that, and I doubt you would either, but hey, what are the chances it will actually happen?

I've yet to read of one publisher complaining about another publisher's re-use of their material. Which, considering that complaining about such re-use would definately be against the "spirit" of the OGL, I doubt it will ever happen.

Oh, it's happened. A while back I was reading Publisher A's message boards. They were talking about an upcoming project that included OGC from many publishers. A customer asked why Publisher B's material was not included. Publisher A said "because we asked them and they were mean and said they didn't want us to." I sent Publisher B an e-mail asking "What's up? Were you mean?" Publisher B basically said that they had a long history with Publisher A and they had decided to not include each other's OGC in any future work. I've heard of other such events, but this is the only one that I have anything like personal knowledge of.

Because the Contributor has no right under the OGL to say no and I see no reason to relinquish my right to use OGC because some publisher's having a bad hair day and doesn't feel like saying yes.

There's more to it than a bad hair day, of course. Sure, they don't have a legal right to say no, but the industry is small enough there's really no reason to upset anyone by using their work against their will, OGL supported or not.

No. In fact, it wouldn't be bad for us if WotC rolled over and died.

You really think that? The whole purpose of this thread is discuss distributing material they wrote. Sure, they've come down a few pegs, but by and large, they're still producing the best D&D material overall (if you disagree, fine, but that's a whole other thread, so let's not start that discussion here). If they went away, there's a good chance the better writers would end up elsewhere, but any other publishers would lack WotC's market penetration. Perhaps someone who knows something about marketing can address the significance of that. Just losing their distribution would be a blow- not everyone is comfortable ordering stuff online.

Possible? Yes. But considering the fact that so many opponents to the OGL are in WotC already, who's to say it wasn't already a possibility?

Of course it's a possibility already, but giving those people more ammunition doesn't help the chances of WotC staying on the OGL bandwagon.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Perhaps I'm off, but this is his idea of taking something like the environemental subraces in UA, like aquatic halflings, and expanding it to include more subraces, like volcanic halflings or something, right? That's perfectly fine. That kind of thing is the intent of the OGL. I don't think anybody here is saying that people shouldn't do that sort of thing. What some of us are saying is that people shouldn't just transcribe 100% of the text so that others don't have to pay for it. That's all.

See, here we have two conflicting interests... Now bear with me, I'm just trying to explain this.

See, we have essentially two choices: (1) Transcribe the material word for word or (2) treat it like "crippled" OGC where it is transformed into an outline (i.e., just the rule and specific situational/conditional information related to the rule) and then re-written..

The problem comes with the re-written part. We can assume that AC and company knew exactly what they were writing (disclaimor: Errata pending, of course) and used words for specific reasons. Granted, we may interpret those words or be inspired by them differently, but those are the words in the book. Where this gets messy is when I, in preparing a Distribution (such as UA+Fan), re-write the material in such a manner that a particular fact, tidbit, hint, suggestion, whatever, doesn't come across the way it should.

See, this is the problem with "crippled" OGC... It leads to a lot of extra work by virtue of outlining and rewriting, and then you're always double-checking yourself to make sure that what was originally expressed in your Distribution is the same as the Distribution you are deriving from. Granted, you should always see if you can express the idea better than the original, but it seems counter-productive to the "spirit" of Open Gaming to put folks through all the trouble of trying to at least match the original's quality if that quality happens to be high.

(Consequently, this is why I'm likely one of the few people that actually takes the time to de-cripple OGC, as it is a lot of friggin' work, but it's also yet another reason for Aedon's trips'n'stumbles during the past year.)

I guess it could be that, from the standpoint of not making a "100% as written minus Product Identity", what you are suggesting feels kinda like "crippled" OGC except this crippling is now voluntary of the re-user rather than occuring at the source (which is to say, it feels both wrong and wierd). Thus, if "I" were to actually do this project (beyond the scope of what I'm actually using in my game, that is), I would indeed use the [as written] - [PI] formula because the other way is just buggy.

P.S.: I don't think I'd do "Volcanic" anything as an Environmental Subrace, but I might look at it as an Elemental Race (Magma, to be precise). Reason being that a volcano (or cluster there of) are typically locations within a larger environment and thus wouldn't serve as a suitable source of physical influence for an entire race. Then again, it's fantasy, so with a little backstory about "thousands of miles of volcanic vents and ash plumes" from another person submitting the race would likely be welcomed.

Also, having done a preview, I see you've replied to me again...

 

[barsoomcore]

Right, but with if the imaginary closed 4E is good? Then I would have to choose.

"Have to" is rather strong language. The only case in which you would "have to" choose is one in which 4E is demonstrably better in objective ways than 3E.

And for that, I direct you to the ongoing thread discussing the virtues and flaws of the HERO system currently raging a few threads below this one. I present that as evidence that such comparisions are inevitably subjective and thus no one can reasonably claim to be forced to choose one system or another.

Would you consider every frivolous lawsuit filed to be ethical?

That the legal system is problematic, especially in the United States, I would not argue. We don't have the same kind of problem here in Canada because our legal system doesn't make that behaviour worthwhile.

Don't blame the lawyers, though. Blame the politicians who create bad laws.

No publisher has gone on record claiming #1 (That it's mean), but that's partly because they'd look lame given the lack of a legal leg to stand on, so it would be hard to come up with evidence to support #1.

Yeah, pretty hard to come up with "evidence" to support the notion that something is "mean". Also pretty hard to justify that other people shouldn't do something just because you think it's mean. People shouldn't murder each other not because it's mean, but because a society where people can murder each other is unsafe.

I believe there are publishers who feel that way though.

Then perhaps they shouldn't use a license that says it's okay to republish their work. If they think it's mean for people to do that, then I guess they should be prepared to have their feelings hurt if they tell people it's okay for them to do that.

As for #2, sure, it's speculation that this behaviour will hurt the industry, but I haven't seen anything to make me think it's illogical speculation. We've seen one publisher speculate that it might hurt his sales. If he perceives it might, chances are others do as well. If a publisher perceives something as being a threat to sales, isn't it logical to assume they might look for ways to avoid it?

I've said as much. If publishing OGC turns out to be a bad business model, publishers will stop doing it. I don't see how this is bad for the industry. On the contrary, this is good for the industry. Publishers continuing to publish OGC even though they lose money at it is bad for the industry because then they'll run out of money and won't be able to publish anything, open or closed.

Publishers making money is a healthy industry. What does it matter if they're making money publishing open or closed content?

What if that publisher is WotC, clearly the publisher in the best position to avoid releasing OGC, and clearly the one that would hurt the D20 world the most if they stopped supporting the OGL. It just happens to be a WotC product that started this whole discussion. Thus, I'm concerned.

If WotC never publishes another word of OGC, how does that hurt the d20 world? I agree that every word of OGC they publish helps because it becomes part of the open content fund that all publishers can dip into to create their own products. It does not follow that no future content will hurt -- just that things won't get any better than they already are. And with the D&D SRD and the Modern SRD released, things are pretty good.

We (those publishers commited to the OGL) can take it from here, thanks.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

As noted in my reply to barsoomcore above, it was mainly Nikolai, but you did say Andy's comments put him in a bad light. That's not quite villifying him, but it's more flak than I think he deserves for stating his opinion on the matter.

Actually, I'm going to pull a part of your reply to Barsoomcore before addressing this...

No publisher has gone on record claiming #1, but that's partly because they'd look lame given the lack of a legal leg to stand on, so it would be hard to come up with evidence to support #1.

This is the "bad light" that AC put himself in. Also, I was only indicating why he received the flak he did; the statement itself is not flak.

Please don't group me with JohnRTroy. We may on the surface be on the same side of this discussion, but he's come out with some moral judgments, which I have not (or at least not intended to- please see the next paragraph before responding to that). While I wouldn't copy UA onto a website, I don't pass any sort of judgment on someone wanting to do so, and I've stated that I understand why you want to. My concern here has always been that doing so will create a perception among publishers, most notably WotC, that producing OGC leads to lost sales as the work is given away for free.

Alright... Threads sometimes gets two people at each other because of a third person's post. General statements are sometimes taken as targeted statements. You are you and he is he.

I stand corrected.

I've said I don't think it's right to distribute UA's OGC for free. I don't mean 'right' in a moral way, but that it's bad for the game because it might discourage publishers from producing more OGC. That's my only concern. If I knew it would not affect how publishers view OGC in the future, I certainly wouldn't care at all if you copied all OGC ever produced onto your website, then packaged it into a pdf and gave it away on rpgnow.

Alright. However, my own view is that the OGC portion of the work is too often associated with a company's profit line. The "Crunch vs Fluff" issue has led to "Crunch" being the main product of the d20 industry. Yet, it is this "Crunch" that is slated as Open Gaming Content. Thus, the line where it is "right" for the industry to reproduce the material after its original contribution is an unknown vector in the equation. If I buy a book today and get uber-inspired and create something from it during the next week, how long must I wait before Distributing my derivitive work with the re-used OGC? What is considered a "fair time"? Cergorach gave a scaled time-system, d20X has 6 months for any product. And while I don't know if Cergorach asked anyone "in the biz" before coming up with his system, I know that I suggested 6 months for the RD-proposed OGC distribution and that suggestion was adopted by d20X before I even joined.

Could you please accept that the fact that I've stated many times that what you want to do is fair ground under the terms of the OGL? Yes, it says you can post all the OGC in UA on a website and distribute it for free; I've never implied otherwise.

Actually, this is half-related to the fact that many statements made against a UA-SRD project (or any similar project) is mostly about publisher impact. What I'm saying is that the publishers are fully aware that OGC can be reproduced and distributed and should be considering this when developing their products. This, of course, relates to the "Crunch vs Fluff" issue above, being that there is such a demand for "Crunch" that publishers have essentially stopped paying attention to how much of their material was becoming dominated by Open Game Content and they forgot about the possible outcome of doing so.

I've read the post at GR's boards. I think Chris has every right to say he'd appreciate it if people don't give his work away. Again, perfectly legal for them to it, he just said he'd appreciate it if they don't. He's not whining or doing anything inappropriate, just saying he'd appreciate it if that didn't happen. If that guy goes ahead and makes a skull and bones free download, and Chris thinks it ends up hurting their sales, do you think he might change his policy of making just about everything GR produces OGC? Obviously I can't speak for Chris, but I know how I'd feel if I was in his shoes. Is it good for fans of GR's work that they make their stuff OGC? GR is a great company in terms of making pretty much everything open content, even stuff most companies would make PI. Anyone who would question Chris over his attitude toward the OGL isn't paying attention.

I think you missed my point (although that is a fair analysis). I was indicating that you needed to compare the attitude difference between the two posts; basically, I was trying to illustrate why AC was in a "bad light" from his post and why CP wasn't. Chris is both calm, courtious, and, most importantly, entirely factual (and I'm not just saying that because he's the head of one of my Top 5 Pubs) despite it being a topic he was obviously opposed to.

Now, since you bring it up, I'd like to return to point of "Co-Adaptability Statements". There is some degree of "linking" between products. GR's Shaman references (but strangely enough doesn't require) S&S's Relics & Rituals. The OGL Interlink connects some GR titles with titles from other companies. M&M's Superlink allows 3rd Party M&M products (don't scald me if this isn't accurate; I'm not an M&M fan so that's more of an "outsider's view" of it). Indeed, it seems the leader in "Co-Adaptability Licensing" does indeed seem to be Green Ronin (way to go!). However, does it go far enough? Would it not be more beneficial, to Publishers and fan-projects if there was a little more open-air between those that produce derivitive works? Wouldn't Green Ronin benefit from another entity's product if said product had a "Required to Use" list on the back cover that included GR's Assassin's Handbook? Thus, rather than waiting to release derivitive material, or risking redistribution before the origating source is comfortable with it, or re-inventing the wheel just to avoid the problem entirely, I could instead just include an NPC that uses the Assassin Base Class with the reader refered back to the Green Ronin book? Wouldn't that promote sales and further distribution of the original product far more than huddling over coveted OGC and hoping that no one will reproduce it?

That's the problem with the business model for the entire Open Gaming industry; it puts companies into competition for the same gaming dollar when they could be working more cooperatively. I'm not saying that it should be some big, smoochy love-fest between publishers, but rather an attempt to "offficialize" some form of standing agreement.

For instance, the license could be as simple as

"By using this License, You may indicate that Your Work contains material derived from any Distribution included by the Participant of this License. You may not claim that the originating Distribution requires Your Work unless it is factually true. You may not claim compatibility. You may not dispute Copyright. By accepting this License, You are accepting the limitation of not reproducing OGC directly from the source; the Item may be used in scenario design (such as a Character with a Feat), but full reproduction of the OGC will be limited to only that which has been altered by You."

Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, but I think the idea here is clear enough.

Now, GR can decide that they will participate. They "sign in" and include the following Product Lines: Master Class, Races of Renown, and Secret Arcana.

Now, in my product, I can include a line on the Title Page, Back Cover, or Both, "Contains material derived from the Secret College of Necromancy by Green Ronin." Then, within the product, I am talking about a specific group of Sorcerers, and I include the line, "These Sorcerers may only gain spells taken from the Necromancer's Spell List in Secret College of Necromancy."

However, in doing so, I have made a change to the spell ray of palsey. I will then reproduce ray of palsey with my changes.

And, naturally, SCoN will be in the Section 15.

So, I've now plugged SCoN on my back cover, title page, or both; I have referred to the Spell List from SCoN, and I have left all of the spells from that list except the one I changed out of my distribution, all the while remaining compliant to the OGL.

If publishers want to "reign in" OGC distribution on the web, than this is the sort of step they need to take. Most probably haven't thought of it because, per the OGL, it's a no-no; except, however, that the OGL does provide an exception: "...except as expressly licensed in another, independant Agreement with the owner..." Such a license as I (probably most ineptly) describe above would serve as just that.

IANAL, but as mentioned in my earlier reply to barsoomcore, people have actually gotten off on the "but I was driving safely" defense here in California. Like it or not.

Well, in Chicago (my home town), "California Stops" get you tickets.

Right, but WotC waited some time after their release before adding those to the SRD.

True, but they were also not released under the OGL and Wizards indicated that, over time, these books would be added. UA is a different beast altogether: It is under the OGL, and WotC has not indicated if or when it will go into the SRD or into an SRD-side document. And, personally, I don't think it will happen, per my comments on page 1 of this thread.

That's what I hoped you meant (we've gotten this far without insults, I hoped that hadn't changed). Anyway, the fact that I wouldn't copy OGC to a website or publication without first asking the publisher is irrelevant (I'm sure you wholeheartedly agree, no need to post it). What is relevant is that you think it's morally fine to transcribe UA onto your website, and the OGL clearly says that's legal. However, is it the right thing to do? Will it end up hurting the gaming community? I think it might, so I'd prefer you don't do it. That's all I'm saying. I'm not calling you or anyone else here a bad person or whatever.

Alright, here's the "unspoken critisism" from myself about a project like this.

First, we have two-three people claiming to have scanned/OCR'd the document. Second, we have people (like myself) that indicate that they are willing to transcribe the information. However, transcription seems a waste of time if a scanned copy that is OGL-compliant is available; Why type when you can copy/paste? So the folks with the scans aren't sending them (either non-comunicating, held to a "time lock", or persuaded by Andy's post on page 1 not to). Regardless, I feel like I'm spending too much time transcribing Insanity when I know Breakdaddy can email me that section after a few minutes of scrubbing the PI out of it, so I'm getting distracted easily while trying to do so.

So I'm left wondering if this project is even still going.

Either way, if transcribed, it will be months before it is near completed, thus the idea of waiting months seems kinda non-sequitor. If scanned, it probably should be "held back" for a few months, but we come again to the question: How long is long enough?

I hope you're right (about them not releasing it as closed content). I disagree about it being a mistake on their part. It would be pretty trivial for them to come out with 4E and a whole new OGL, maybe called ORPGL or something, that simply has more restrictive language, and less information in the SRD. I wouldn't like that, and I doubt you would either, but hey, what are the chances it will actually happen?

Slim, I think. Over all, the OGL/d20STL has been relatively successful, although the economy has been in a slump for a while so it's likely not showing compared to the "forecast" made in the bumpin' economy of '99.

Oh, it's happened. A while back I was reading Publisher A's message boards. They were talking about an upcoming project that included OGC from many publishers. A customer asked why Publisher B's material was not included. Publisher A said "because we asked them and they were mean and said they didn't want us to." I sent Publisher B an e-mail asking "What's up? Were you mean?" Publisher B basically said that they had a long history with Publisher A and they had decided to not include each other's OGC in any future work. I've heard of other such events, but this is the only one that I have anything like personal knowledge of.

Yikes... To bad. I'm not going to ask for more details, nor even speculate who, but that is unfortunate.

There's more to it than a bad hair day, of course. Sure, they don't have a legal right to say no, but the industry is small enough there's really no reason to upset anyone by using their work against their will, OGL supported or not.

See, that's the catch right there. Supposedly, by releasing material as OGC, my re-use of it should not ever be considered against the will of the Contributor because the Contributor consents to all forms of re-use by using the license.

That's the first "price" of Open Gaming; The second being that you must acknowledge all contributing sources in your Section 15.

You really think that? The whole purpose of this thread is discuss distributing material they wrote. Sure, they've come down a few pegs, but by and large, they're still producing the best D&D material overall (if you disagree, fine, but that's a whole other thread, so let's not start that discussion here). If they went away, there's a good chance the better writers would end up elsewhere, but any other publishers would lack WotC's market penetration. Perhaps someone who knows something about marketing can address the significance of that. Just losing their distribution would be a blow- not everyone is comfortable ordering stuff online.

There are several things to consider.

First, the OGL allows D&D (in form if not name) to continue forward without WotC. This was absolutely intentional.

Second, the writers/staff could easily go their own ways, produce d20 on their own or for somebody else, etc.

Third, by now, the d20 logo has become nearly synonous to D&D (indeed, just indicating a product is SRD-derived is enough for an OGL-only product). While the "groundwork" marketing of D&D would be lost, there's little reason to believe that such groundwork couldn't be formed in another manner by another publisher. Cooperative marketing, plugging SRD-derived products in-total would be a big start.

Don't get me wrong, I feel no ill-will towards WotC as a business entity; I just don't see them as an indispensable necessity for the RPG industry.

Of course it's a possibility already, but giving those people more ammunition doesn't help the chances of WotC staying on the OGL bandwagon.

Except we still don't know how this will pan out. But one must also consider the speed of this project. For instance, has my having W&V in my material effected sales? Will it effect sales when I add Taint? Will it effect sales when I add Sanity? Will it effect sales when I then take these three and put them together into a single document on their own? Will it effect sales if someone sends me a transcription of Legendary Weapons and I add that? At what point does a collection of OGC actually become a threat to the sales of the product that OGC originates in?

 

[Bendris Noulg]

please, somebody kill me

What did I miss and will http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=17294]this make you feel better?[/font]

 

[kenjib]

I have two points.

The first is that if so-called ethical use of the OGL requires that you understand some kind of "spirit" that isn't in the word of the license and indeed only exists in the inner circles of some OGL mailing list for publishers or buried two years back on the message board of each respective publisher, then the OGL is a very, very, poorly written legal document and anyone who releases material under it has poor business sense. If making a free PDF release of all of the open content in Unearthed Arcana is not completely okay, ethical, and uncontested by WotC, then WotC needs to draft up a new revised license and start releasing material under that instead (including re-releasing all prior material, such as the SRDs).

The second is that if someone doesn't want people to copy their entire book and redistribute it, then they should not release it as 100% (or approaching 100%) open content. It's that simple. The burden of responsibility here does not weigh on the person who re-uses the material. It lies on the person who makes the business decision to sign a legal agreement and be bound by it's terms.

Once you get into talking about "spirit" and whatever else is supposedly implied but not stated in the OGL, you are actually making it very difficult for anyone to operate with the license because nobody knows what the rules are. If nobody knows what the rules are, then the chance that ugly disagreements will result just increases. Ambiguity breeds disagreement. The simple solution is for people to be clear in their legal language and make sure that their legal agreements do what they say and say what they do.

Why the heck are people signing on to this license if they don't want to agree with what it says????

 

[Wasgo]

Why the heck are people signing on to this license if they don't want to agree with what it says????

Because many D20 based OGL products sell better than for systems that have a smaller user base. That being said, most publishers go well beyond the minimum requirements of OGC, because of they not to cripple their products, and usually by their own statement, it's because they want to allow other companies to reuse their gaming elements without problem. However, very few would claim they do so in order to allow someone to republish their whole work.

Trying to modify the license so that people could reuse the work in some capacities but not others, given the existing OGL license which must also be valid is a legal nightmare. So rather than do that, they publish very open works, and hope people won't abuse their intended use.

A legal document doesn't have a spirit, but there is a spirit in which they choose how much work to make OGC. They're giving back to the community, both of fans, and publishers. I somehow doubt declaring an entire product to be OGC is a 'business model',