I'm a geek, so yeah, the OGL was awesome. Free the information, all the way, whoo hoo, and such. But why is there so much sudden disapproval of the new GSL?
Seems to me that most publishers can still release pretty much the same products they always could. It's just that now WotC has said, "We only want people making things that gamers will use with our core books."
So there won't be a Mutants & Masterminds derived from 4e rules. Is that a big loss? Green Ronin could make their own game, which is pretty much what they did before. Remember, you can't copyright game mechanics, just the specific text of a game mechanic. Nothing's stopping, well, anyone from effectively stealing the whole of 4e, rewriting it, and releasing it under the old OGL?
Okay, actually, I have to admit, the OGL did lead to companies like Green Ronin rising in stature. I'm not sure how many game companies there'd be today if not for the OGL. Will we see more fracturing of player bases again?
Sadly, we don't have an alternate reality machine to see how things would turn out with a different license.