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<blockquote data-quote="jeffh" data-source="post: 1489719" data-attributes="member: 2642">I'm all for upholding ethics and morality over law.&nbsp; I utterly fail, however, to see anything unethical about the behaviour you describe, and as far as I can see you haven't even tried to explain your objection to it; you seem to assume it's self-evident what the problem is, but that's not the case, your use of loaded words in describing it notwithstanding.If you strip out all the phrases like &quot;unethical&quot;, &quot;steal&quot; and &quot;strip-mine&quot; from your description of the second publisher, what's left simply describes what the OGL, which the original publisher agreed to of their own free will, clearly and explicitly gives them permission to do.&nbsp; They're not exploiting an obscure loophole, they're doing something that the OGL was deliberately designed to allow, that the people who created the OGL (by which I mean first and foremost Ryan Dancey) have been clear about allowing from the very beginning, and that according to comments in this thread, is very much in keeping with Dancey's own intentions and vision for the OGL.&nbsp; Moreover, Woodelf's comments about the shelf life of gaming products are very relevant here - the argument that the proposed SRD would take money out of WotC's pockets is questionable at best (though I personally would want such an SRD to appear, at the soonest, in mid-July, just to make sure - that gives the sort of six-month window that has been talked about elsewhere here).There is even a case to be made for the view that the only unethical one in your examples is the original publisher, who agrees to the OGL but then seeks to, in effect, back out of this agreement by trying to stop people from doing what their voluntary agreement to the license quite clearly allows them to do.&nbsp;&nbsp; When politicians do this we call it &quot;talking out of both sides of their mouth&quot; or worse.&nbsp; In more concrete terms, if WotC or Green Ronin don't want people to use their OGC, why are they releasing it under the OGL in the first place?Edit - replaced my original last paragraph with a much better one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jeffh, post: 1489719, member: 2642"] I'm all for upholding ethics and morality over law. I utterly fail, however, to see anything unethical about the behaviour you describe, and as far as I can see you haven't even tried to [b]explain[/b] your objection to it; you seem to assume it's self-evident what the problem is, but that's not the case, your use of loaded words in describing it notwithstanding. If you strip out all the phrases like "unethical", "steal" and "strip-mine" from your description of the second publisher, what's left simply describes what the OGL, which the original publisher agreed to of their own free will, clearly and explicitly gives them permission to do. They're not exploiting an obscure loophole, they're doing something that the OGL was deliberately designed to allow, that the people who created the OGL (by which I mean first and foremost Ryan Dancey) have been clear about allowing from the very beginning, and that according to comments in this thread, is very much in keeping with Dancey's own intentions and vision for the OGL. Moreover, Woodelf's comments about the shelf life of gaming products are very relevant here - the argument that the proposed SRD would take money out of WotC's pockets is questionable at best (though I personally would want such an SRD to appear, at the soonest, in mid-July, just to make sure - that gives the sort of six-month window that has been talked about elsewhere here). There is even a case to be made for the view that the only unethical one in your examples is the original publisher, who agrees to the OGL but then seeks to, in effect, back out of this agreement by trying to stop people from doing what their voluntary agreement to the license quite clearly allows them to do. When politicians do this we call it "talking out of both sides of their mouth" or worse. In more concrete terms, if WotC or Green Ronin don't want people to use their OGC, why are they releasing it under the OGL in the first place? Edit - replaced my original last paragraph with a much better one. [/QUOTE]

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