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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tav_Behemoth" data-source="post: 1502185" data-attributes="member: 18017">My comrade from Amsterdam's point is well taken.  The Guardians of Order's Anime SRD as well as Gold Rush Games' Action! System SRD are both freely accessible on the web in electronic text form (see <a href="http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/index.html</a>). And I certainly shouldn't have forgotten our own Bendris Noulg's Aedon open gaming project; make sure to list it at the Foundation when it's out of beta, Bendris!The case of WOTC's splat books clarifies that popularity is the main factor in whether something is opened up by users, or "text hacked". My definition of text hacking is scanning, OCRing, and sharing something in a form that's readable by people; I'm considering releasing OGC in a machine-readable form, for use with PCGen etc., to be a separate phenomenon.The PHB, DMG, and MM contain mostly OGC that was also freely released on the Web. The UA contains mostly OGC that was only released as part of the inaccessible print book. The splat books contain no OGC and also had a print-only release. Despite these differences, what these have in common is that someone cared enough to hack their text. In the case of the core books, this is a pirate activity, since copyrighted art etc. is included in the files that are being distributed. In the case of the UA, the OGL makes the text-hacking legal so long as the scanners nobly put in the extra effort to strip away all copyrighted material/PI from the OCRed text before sharing the fruits of their labor.Even though all d20 releases contain some OGC, and some open content has been made freely available as SRDs, as far as I know no third-party release has been popular enough to inspire text hacking of the print book or customization of the free SRD. A good example of how popularity can trump all other factors is that the Bible is far and away the most consistently profitable book in the history of publishing, despite the fact that no one holds any copyright to its contents and people have been giving away free Bibles for hundreds of years. Ryan Dancey correctly predicted that the open gaming movement would turn core D&D into the Bible of the gaming world.I think it's also true that:1) Open games, especially those whose texts are easily accessible, will be more popular than games that do not have open licenses and are available only in print.2) Community efforts that are open and licensed will be more successful than those that are shadowy and illegal; the work of the local UA team, like the customized SRDs at <a href="http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/" target="_blank">http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/</a>, will be better designed and nicer to use than any pirate text-hack which violates the copyright of its source.</blockquote>

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