Mike Mearls On the OGL

[The Little Raven]

You can take their stuff and reprint it and put it on a wiki or do whatever. That's what the OGL says. See, in the opensource world that Dancey was trying to emulate with the OGL, if you get people saying stuff like that, their code gets copied, forked, and replaced.

I think you're missing Hussar's point.

Yes, by putting out OGC, they were saying "Yes, use my content freely for whatever purpose you wish, whether for personal or commercial use." However, when someone proposes basically making an SRD of all of their OGC, they turned around and said "No, don't use it that freely." That strikes some of us as rather... well... hypocritical. They want to benefit from the concept, but don't really want to contribute to it in the same fashion. And they get a free pass from many in the community because they're not WotC.

 

[Hussar]

That's true, although it has quite a lot to do with the concept of Open OSRIC Content.

Heh, well now that's true.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I think you're missing Hussar's point.

Yes, by putting out OGC, they were saying "Yes, use my content freely for whatever purpose you wish, whether for personal or commercial use." However, when someone proposes basically making an SRD of all of their OGC, they turned around and said "No, don't use it that freely."

Are you referring to Andy Collins and Unearthed Arcana?

 

[redcard]

I think you're missing Hussar's point.

Yes, by putting out OGC, they were saying "Yes, use my content freely for whatever purpose you wish, whether for personal or commercial use." However, when someone proposes basically making an SRD of all of their OGC, they turned around and said "No, don't use it that freely." That strikes some of us as rather... well... hypocritical. They want to benefit from the concept, but don't really want to contribute to it in the same fashion. And they get a free pass from many in the community because they're not WotC.

Oh, I get the point precisely. I know what happened, I watched it happen. My point is that people should use it that freely ANYWAY. It IS hypocritical when companies do that, but it's also something that is completely outside their control.

If you want freedom like the software open source movement has, you have to be willing to call people on it when they try to abuse that. You have to be willing to take the OGC content and move it away from people who "free'd" it but are now deciding it's not free.

I think people were being FAR too nice in situations where obvious breaches in the OGL occurred. A company does NOT have the right to say "No, you can't use it for this purpose" after releasing something as OGC under the OGL.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

A company does NOT have the right to say "No, you can't use it for this purpose" after releasing something as OGC under the OGL.

To my knowledge, no publisher ever said "You can't."

I think all publishers from WotC on down are in agreement that there are responsible ways to use those rights, and irresponsible ways to use those rights.

 

[Remathilis]

Put on another hat for a minute...

Lets say WotC decided rightly to "evolve" the D&D line by using open d20 rules. To make a constantly compiled D&D ruleset using the creme-de-la-creme of the OGL market.

It would have failed. Why? D&D is NOT software.

First and foremost, there is no useful method of applying the changes made by improving code. I just downloaded the third edition of Firefox yesterday, but before that I was using 2.0.0.14. That means 14 times I redownloaded Firefox to fix or tweak something on it. If you were a tech-savvy user who used d20srd.org or similar, that would be no big deal to add small changes, but would YOU buy the 14th iteration of the core books because they fixed grapple?

3.5 was the closest WotC ever got to the concept of an "evolving core ruleset" which did borrow heavily from outside d20 sources (Monte Cooks ranger is the baseline for the 3.5 ranger, for example). And I can recall every person who bemoaned buying the 3.5 rule book because "WotC is selling us the same rules again".

Duh. Microsoft sells you the same Word Processor every three years.

For Wizards (who wished to remain a for-profit company) the return on OGL wasn't worth the cost. D&D gained little* in the form of innovation because many people were too busy re-inventing the wheel and making new competing d20 games. Sure Castles & Crusades is a wonderful game, but its materials (from the core books to Castle Zygag) were mostly incompatible with WotC's flagship game. C&C doesn't move PHBs. No more so than Storyteller books sell D&D books. WotC ended up making its own worst enemies (C&C, True d20, Pathfinder) who can better directly compete with D&D than WEG, White-Wolf, or Palladium ever could.

[* There was plenty of people who played nice. I don't want to take away from them. Necromancer Games, S&SS, Goodman Games, Kenzer, Green Ronin before going True d20, and others were very committed to expanding D&D rather than going out on its own.]

So WotC (via GSL) is putting a giant crimp in using its rules to stem the creation of its next level of competition. It sucks, but I can't say I blame them. After the bubble, most d20 products were competition, not enhancement to WotCs carefully constructed and expensively produced ruleset. WotC wants things like Slayer's Guide to Orcs, the Tome of Horrors, or Dungeon Crawl Classics, not Conan d20 or Castles and Crusades. The former doesn't challenge WotCs dominance and it makes people buy PHB2. The latter uses their toys to make new competing entities that doesn't need nor want PHB2.

Welcome to Open Gaming 2008.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Remember, Mearls proposed an OGC wiki exactly for this purpose, and it didn't garner much support from publishers because most didn't want their OGC compiled into a free format.

Nothing at all other then time and money stopped anyone from building a OGC wiki. No publisher of OGC material had any ability to do anything but whine once their originated OGC material made it into such a a wiki if properly cited.

The real problem with such a wiki would be the citations, they'd overwhelm the OGC rules on the page for word count. (As i assume would be the requirment since people could link in to each entry and as such each entry would need a readble section 15 )

 

[JDJblatherings]

Where's the Mongoose SRD?

mongoose runequest SRD-
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpg/series.php?qsSeries=39

There is or will be a Traveller SRD.

So lookie there Mongoose supports open gaming.

 

[Maggan]

I think all publishers from WotC on down are in agreement that there are responsible ways to use those rights, and irresponsible ways to use those rights.

And therein lies the rub. What is, and what is not responsible, is up to debate, and not at all cut and dried.

Basically, some publishers said "sure you can use our OGC but you'd be a jerk to do it", and others didn't agree on the jerk part.

/M

 

[The Little Raven]

Are you referring to Andy Collins and Unearthed Arcana?

No, I'm talking about the proposed OGC Wiki and the 3rd Party Publisher response to it.

Do you have a link for this Andy Collins/Unearthed Arcana incident you're talking about?