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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 2801664" data-attributes="member: 13098">In what way?  How do you define a 'small publisher'?  Wouldn't PDF publishers be considered small as well?  How does the existence of a PDF stifle innovation?  There is an assumption that the folks producing PDFs would still be designing material if they couldn't make a living at it.  Listen, I would love to be a designer.  But after I get done with my 40+ hour a week day job, I don't have the energy to do much design.  If somebody like Phil Reed can make enough money from PDFs that he can be a game designer, more power to him.  I really don't see the stifling of collaboration and innovation due to the existance of PDFs any more than I see it from a community of small press publishers that are unwilling to collaborate because they have tied up all their operating revenue in the next dead tree book.  It's a growing process and the OGL has not been around for very long.  This isn't a parallel with the computer industry because the free sharing of software was around long before the GPL was.  A little package called Sendmail was given away for free.  The GPL was brought into existence as a reaction to several conditions.  Some are of interest to other industries, others (such as security) are not as interesting to other industries.  My point is that you can't draw too many parallels between the GPL and the OGL and the OGL is much younger.  We are moving more toward an environment where online material will become more prevalent.  Children today are growing up with greater acceptance of electronic media and a greater awareness of the environmental cost of supporting dead tree publishing.  Right now we are in a strange middle stage.  PDFs probably won't help bring a new gamer into the fold.  But my experience with my local LGS is that they are not helping bring new gamers in either.  Obviously this isn't true everywhere, and I wish my perception was different locally.  But it does make me wonder how many other stores are still stuck in a cliqueish mode where most parents would not feel comfortable allowing their children into the store. I digress.  The thing is, the OGL and PDF industry is still so new that it will still take time before we do see where it is going and how it will grow.  In my opinion, PDFs are much more suited to collaboration and innovation.  It is easier to change a PDF product and update it to your customers.  ST Cooley Publishing has already done this, to a limited degree, with the Enchiridion of Mystic Music.  The release I have on my computer is improved over the first one that I purchased.  It also includes material from 37 sources aside from the SRD.  The update was free for me since I had already purchased the product previously.  Is that innovation and collaboration?  I would deem it so, but obviously that is a value judgement.  I do know that those changes never would have happened with a traditional book.</blockquote>

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