NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 2802187" data-attributes="member: 2013">Um... WTF?  Not to sound bitter, but the blame for this falls solely on WotC, because they have never wanted to bother themselves with enforcing the OGL.WotC is the entity that has allowed publishers to withhold portions of their contributions from the community rather than making it an "all-or-nothing" proposition and in doing so, allowed obfuscated PI/OGC designations to, for all practical purposes, create products that contribute nothing to the community (Remember kids, the OGL requires that "You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content." - emphasis mine).WotC is the entity that has declined to enforce the OGL in any meaningful way, thus allowing "non-compliant" OGC declarations - and hence closing up of material - to persist. (They could have fixed this one early by actually enforcing the OGL and requiring publishers to CLEARLY designate their OGC, something that a great many publishers STILL DON'T DO TO THIS DAY - 5 YEARS LATER.  Lean on someone early, when the stakes are still small, and everyone else gets the point and does a good job of things - and the community has a steady flow of clear OGC.)If there's one thing I've learned watching the OGL versus the GPL, it's that if you really believe in the Open movement, you have to write that spirit into the "letter of the law" because anyone who doesn't have that spirit is just going to take your stuff and not give back if you don't.  The GPL has teeth to force things open.  The OGL doesn't (and it doesn't help that WotC has never really leaned on anyone to comply, meaning any teeth it does have become non-existent because they're never used).Mike, I know you don't work in legal over at WotC, but if you really want to increase the innovation and make things Open for the benefit of all, get WotC to start issuing letters of non-compliance to every company that has not clearly designated their OGC, with the threat that if the designations are not updated within 30 days (per the license), litigation for copyright infringement will follow.  Trust me, that action alone will open the floodgates of Open Content.  You don't have to do this to every company out there - one or two biggies, whom any ENWorlder could probably name off the top of his/her head - would be enough of a warning shot to get the whole industry straightened up.Some blame DOES fall third-party publishers' feet... the ones with obfuscated OGC/PI designations clearly don't want to be a part of the Open Gaming Movement (else they wouldn't close their content via bad designations) - of course, WotC is ALSO in this crowd, so for a WotC employee to rant about not making things open is something of the pot calling the kettle black.I'll probably regret writing that, but there it is.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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