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<blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 3018392" data-attributes="member: 9225">The OGL is very much a good faith agreement from WotC not to enact legal action against others that:1) Would, in the case of using D&amp;D's rules, be almost completely without merit, but:2) Would, despite being meritless, still ruin anyone subjected to it, thanks to WotC having more money to throw at any such dispute than anyone else.It's basically a safe harbour. Many, many aspects of the rules should not require the OGL at all. But it's safer to use it, and lots of people are *convinced* that the rules are somehow &quot;owned&quot; by WotC. Undoubtedly, many specific expressions of the rules are indeed owned by them, but separating that protected content would require a . . . painful process.This is the hand we're dealt. My concern is with the precedent this custom raises (lots and lots of people treating things as being protected, when they aren't), which is pretty much antithetical to the ethos of open source. Then again, this whole scheme was designed to induce a destructive externality for competing systems.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="eyebeams, post: 3018392, member: 9225"] The OGL is very much a good faith agreement from WotC not to enact legal action against others that: 1) Would, in the case of using D&D's rules, be almost completely without merit, but: 2) Would, despite being meritless, still ruin anyone subjected to it, thanks to WotC having more money to throw at any such dispute than anyone else. It's basically a safe harbour. Many, many aspects of the rules should not require the OGL at all. But it's safer to use it, and lots of people are *convinced* that the rules are somehow "owned" by WotC. Undoubtedly, many specific expressions of the rules are indeed owned by them, but separating that protected content would require a . . . painful process. This is the hand we're dealt. My concern is with the precedent this custom raises (lots and lots of people treating things as being protected, when they aren't), which is pretty much antithetical to the ethos of open source. Then again, this whole scheme was designed to induce a destructive externality for competing systems. [/QUOTE]

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