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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Setanta" data-source="post: 1493644" data-attributes="member: 2183">@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.   Point taken.  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.  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.  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.   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.  I never said or implied otherwise.  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.  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.  OK. I couldn't tell without the inflection in your voice, er, I mean any smilies. Anyway, I think we can drop that one.  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?  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.  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.  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.  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.</blockquote>

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