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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Setanta" data-source="post: 1493227" data-attributes="member: 2183">Sure, we keep seeing publishers reinvent the wheel, but that's not relevant to the discussion at hand. It doesn't change the fact that that is what the OGL was originally intended to do.  How is Andy Collins' opinion irrelevant? If I was a publisher, I'd stay quiet on this too, because of the way Andy has been villified in this thread for having the audacity to actually want his company to make money on his work. It's strange how that keeps him employed.  As for the first part, I understand the OGL. As for the second, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. That's been discussed quite a bit on this thread. Yes, once something is OGC, people have a right to reproduce it. Nobody is contesting that. The question is not whether they *have* a right, but whether it *is* right. It's a courtesy thing, not a legal thing.  You really can step away from the OGL lecturn.  Who's pretending that?  Nobody is suggesting redistributing OGL on a website is against the law. The crux of the discussion here seems to be whether giving away RPG stuff for free or not is in the spirit of the OGL. You think it is, I don't. It's too bad we can't get publishers to weigh in. As I mentioned above, it seems someone making a point like Andy's just gets the publisher in question villified, so why would they say anything? I have noticed the distinct lack of publishers stepping into this thread and saying they would be happy about people disseminating their work for free immediately after it's published. As I recall, we've got two comments from publishers. Andy's is one, and the other said he appreciates groups like the d20exchange observing a waiting period before reproducing his work on a website for free distrution. As for the speeding analogy, again, nobody is saying that copying UA to a website is against the law. The analogy was originally used to illustrate the difference between believing in the spirit of the law/agreement versus believing in the letter of the law/agreement. The analogy is not to say that posting UA on a website is the same thing as going 5 mph over the speed limit. Someone who stays at a particular speed because it's the speed limit is following the letter, while someone who drives a safe speed without regard for the posted limit is following the spirit of the law. Someone who posts UA on a website is following the letter of the OGL, but in my opinion (and I'm well aware your opinion is different), they are not following the spirit of the OGL. Let's try another, since the first one worked so well (or not!). Let's say you put closed content Aedon stuff on your website (I haven't looked- maybe you already have). Let's say I like it, and contact you to use some of it. You say sure, and we arrive at an agreement whereby I can use something (say, a culture) from Aedon in my future publications. Now, the letter of that agreement says I can use that culture in a series of novels I write, but we really arrived at the agreement within the context of gaming publications. I know that, so I would ask you whether it was OK to use the culture before writing a novel including it, even though the letter of the agreement expressly allows me to do so. I would do that our of courtesy. Do you see my point?  It's not a poor analogy. It's a way of looking at things. I believe in following the spirit of a law or agreement, even if that's different from the letter. In this case, it means I would not post UA to a website, allow that's clearly legal. Obviously I'm not the only one who sees this as a fine analogy, since I wasn't the original person to post it. If you don't see it as a fine analogy, then let's stop talking about it, OK? In the most obvious sense, their intended purpose is clear- there is a price tag on the book, and they've been selling it to distributors, presumably expecting the distributors to sell it to retailers, etc. As for making it OGL, I'm sure they'd like to see publishers re-use some of the rules and ideas in that book, and expand upon them to see which ones are popular. The popular ones will probably be considered for inclusion in 4E someday. I don't think they have any obligation to state that, though.  I don't have subjective ideals at all, and frankly I find it insulting that you would suggest that. Maybe you mean something different than what I think of when I read "subjective values." If I said someone had subjective values, I would be saying that I think they apply their values depending on the situation in such a way that their values never really stop them from doing what they want to do. If you mean something different, please explain yourself. Also, it wasn't inability to use correct terminology. Have you never in your life typed a word that wasn't exactly the right word? You understood what I meant; we communicated fine on that point. There was no reason to point out that I used the wrong word.  How is WotC able to release anything as closed content then? As I'm sure you know, WotC isn't actually publishing under the OGL. Other publishers need to make rules material OGC, sure, but your comment above was in response to my belief that widespread free distribution of WotC's OGC in the form of UA could lead to them making 4E closed content, which goes back to the original point of this whole discussion- transcribing and posting UA is bad for us, the gamers.  Actually, from what I've seen, the companies that don't follow these unwritten rules are the ones that take a reputation hit. There's really no reason not to be courteous here. I haven't heard of too many cases of one publisher stating that they'd prefer another publisher not re-use their OGC, so why not ask?  We are just speculating without knowing the license or the new edition's rules, of course, but wouldn't you agree that it would be bad for us gamers if WotC makes 4E closed? Based on what we've seen of their management, and knowing that there are many opponents of open gaming at WotC, can't you see it as possible that giving away their work for free in the form of UA might lead to 4E being closed?  I don't believe that people transcribing UA and posting it on the web will hurt WotC's sales of said book enough to matter. That isn't important though. Will WotC's management *think* it hurts their sales? Will this be ammunition for the anti-OGL people at WotC to push their agenda with regards to future WotC publications and/or 4E?</blockquote>

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