Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 1490089" data-attributes="member: 5724">As someone with 2 books (300 pages) of completely open material, I'd like to chime in...I completely agree that using the license to it fullest (included ripping out PI and reprinting the entirety of a work) is legal, ethical, and part of my accepting the license. However, part of my using the license (beyond it's benefit in my sales) is for the benefit of the gamers to whom I'm writing. Were someone to actually rip one of my books wholesale without providing me a period of sell-through, my production of OGC material would decrease.Bluntly, I have to make enough money to keep writing/publishing material, be that OGC or not OGC. If forced, I will release the minimum amount of OGC to fulfull my obligations. By forced, I mean if someone decides to not be nice and allow me adequate sell-through time. This would be detrimental to both myself and the reader. I want to release a lot of OGC, but I won't do so if it's fiscally damaging. I publish under the license because it's fiscally beneficial. When it ceases to be more beneficial than detrimental, I'll stop writing/publishing anything but a minimum of OGC.Regardless of what people think morality-wise, ethics-wise, or legally-wise, this is one possible repercussion of ripping a book en toto right after it comes out.Obviously, I'm not WoTC. For them, IMHO, they have no reason to publish any OGC, ever again. People may think that publishing more OGC material may help in their goals of selling more Core books, but I don't think that's true (at least under this edition). There are now smaller companies (Green Ronin, Malhavoc, MEG, Bastion, Goodman, me <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) that support off the OGL, and who release much more OGC than WoTC could produce. There's no "need" for more OGC from WoTC's view (In other words, how much would more OGC material increase sales of the core books, and more importantly, would the material's being OGC increase sales more than it being closed?). Again, IMHO, I think UA is a gift to the smaller publishers out there, and I for one, appreciate it.I like Cregorach's 6 month waiting period. That's very kind of him. In fact, its very kind of all of you so far to not pull out a new books OGC and put it up for free, en toto. I really think we (publishers/authors/readers) all benefit from some restrait in the migration process from printed book to freely available OGC. It helps support the creation of more OGC, and hopefully, better OGC. Thus, the kindness shown by the readers to the publishers in this manner is also a kindness shown to themselves in the long run.And again, let me reiterate in case my message is a bit muddled. Under the license, the material is open. Also, just because it's open, don't assume that treating it as such has no consequences even when such treatment is legal, ethical, and moral. As a publisher, I agree to the license because it benefits me and I extend my work to %100 OGC because I want to increase those benefits for the reader and other publishers. Once this becomes detrimental, my OGC %'s will have to change, or I have to stop publishing under the liscense. There's benefit to us all through a little kindness.joe b.</blockquote>

Verification