New GSL Announcement

[Fifth Element]

To me, harm is negative, help is positive. For instance, I go to sell my house. It is worth 400,000. I sell it for 500,000 but I could have sold it for 600,000 a year ago before things really got tight. That's not harm, that is failing to maximize profits. Selling for 380,000 is harm.

Yes, but it depends on your definition of "negative" and "positive". If you know that you could invest your resources and earn 10%, but instead you try something else and earn only 5%, that's a negative, depending on how you look at it.

 

[SSquirrel]

'it's not dead yet.

It's gettin' better!

 

[BryonD]

Absolutely. The only thing Open Gaming has to its credit is that it was used by Dungeons and Dragons. If Dungeons and Dragons had not used it, it would never have meant anything, and now that Dungeons and Dragons does not use it, it does not mean anything.

(Yes, I'm sure you'll want to inform me that a few other insignificant games have, for whatever reason, fallen under the Open Gaming banner. I don't care, and neither should you, about those other games. By the admission of the second-largest company in the industry - the only other company in the industry that has market share worth talking about - D&D is fantasy roleplaying.)

You welcome to not care. That doesn't make your statements any less ill-informed.

 

[BryonD]

One-sided contracts are called End User License Agreements

The scenario you have built is almost perfectly the opposite of a EULA.

And like I said up-thread, all Wizards would have to do to prevent it from being one-sided is say that WoTC and WoTC alone gets the right to use it, and no one else, which they may do if it's not viral. WoTC doesn't usually use other people's content anyway, based on the track record.

My personal ideal is that it will be viral by choice of the individual company. I'd also be happy if they did make it the same viral conditions as the last time.

I'm still waiting for a cogent explanation of why this would be better for anyone.
As it is, in references you yourself already linked to, that option already exists. If OGL is better you use it, if closed it better, you use that.

However, the cynic tells me it will be closed by default. :-/

I have no doubt there.

 

[La Bete]

You welcome to not care.

I'm down with this -Sora Justice - sorry man , but surely after a bazillion posts you could have done better than that!

Man give us some love as to the WHY!

IBTL! FTW! and all that.

 

[JohnRTroy]

In your opinion.

I'm sure alot of people would disagree with you.

Posting incendiary comments like this doesn't do anything for the debate, btw. You just breed resentment.

To be fair, a lot of the pro-OGL side do make statements of similar emotion as well. I think we both have to accept that our individual viewpoints are not the "one true game".

I do want to take the time to say I am sorry for engaging in puffery in a few posts. Obviously, at times I have used the "we" to represent my own opinions, and Wulf was right to call me on that. And I guess I have crossed the lines at times myself. I do usually try to take care to attack the position but not the person. And I will bow out of the conversation.

I'm not even that emotionally attached to the argument, I just don't think the argument can be as simply stated as the equation OGL = Good, GSL < OGL, Hasbro Lawyers = Evil, and and skeptical of copyleft in general. I promise I will try to express my opinions in the future in a way to try to respect the opinions of others.

 

[BryonD]

I just don't think the argument can be as simply stated as the equation OGL = Good, GSL < OGL, Hasbro Lawyers = Evil

Well, I'm sure you could point out some extreme cases, but as I'm on the list of people you have debated, I'd certainly take issue with this extreme nature of this characterization.

OGL = Good: The OGL has issues, but overall has produced a great deal of "good" with good defined as a wide range of gaming options that a lot of people get a lot of joy out of.

GSL < OGL: Well, if all you care about is publishing 4E compatible material then the GSL sounds somewhat BETTER than the OGL. But if you want games like Mutants and Masterminds and Grim Tales to be cultivated, or simply think that open gaming is a good thing, then clearly the GSL falls way way short of that. And that is without touching on poison pill issues.

Hasbro Lawyers = Evil: Meh, It is not "evil" or even unethical to engage in aggressive free market competition. Neither is it unacceptable to put whatever restrictions you want into your own contract. Anyone who finds he terms acceptable can go wth it and anyone who doesn't can decline with the loss of nothing. Though rather than a good/evil thing, WotC HAS created an Us/Them thing with the poison pill. Now, maybe in the end we will find out they have backed away from that. I certainly hope so. But in the mean time, if you are not part of WotC's "Us", then feeling like you been placed in the enemy "Them" camp is pretty natural.

 

[jmucchiello]

Ironically, the following quotes are in response to me and my response to them both is the same:

I think for the same reason that they've changed the license from Open Gaming to Game System. I suspect somebody at WoTC/Hasbro is not a fan of the copyleft elements of the license--the motives or the whys don't really matter. Otherwise, why would they care about the OGL at all, they'd continue to use it. I know I could be wrong, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'm not.

Why? Because a lot of people in corporate culture JUST DONT GET IT. Its that simple. They are scared of open content. They dont understand it. It bothers them on some internal level. They are managers who answer to larger overlords and fear being the person who is blamed for "giving it away." That is why.

No, the problem is not that someone at WotC is "not a fan of copyleft" nor that they don't "get it". The problem this supposed person has with the OGL is that it's a perpetual license. They can't kill it, can't alter it, can't destroy it. They aren't focused on the viral aspect of the license -- just the control aspect.

 

[Kevin Brennan]

I know this is not likely to make much of a difference, but I would suggest that WotC look hard at the amount of internal resources and energy they're devoting to trying to sort out the GSL, the ongoing negative publicity that they're getting from it, and the likely investment required to sort out all the remaining issues, and really ask themselves if the marginal benefit from preventing the publication of a few competing products really exceeds that cost. I think it's very unlikely that the positive benefits of the GSL over just putting 4e under the OGL would justify the drain on resources that it's causing.

If I thought WotC would take me up on it I'd even offer to help them with the business case.

 

[SSquirrel]

I know this is not likely to make much of a difference, but I would suggest that WotC look hard at the amount of internal resources and energy they're devoting to trying to sort out the GSL, the ongoing negative publicity that they're getting from it, and the likely investment required to sort out all the remaining issues, and really ask themselves if the marginal benefit from preventing the publication of a few competing products really exceeds that cost. I think it's very unlikely that the positive benefits of the GSL over just putting 4e under the OGL would justify the drain on resources that it's causing.

If I thought WotC would take me up on it I'd even offer to help them with the business case.

On the flip side of this, the beancounters would say "well yes, but we've ALREADY spent X amount, and we only need to spend .3 X more now. May as well not have that money be wasted"