OGC Wiki?

[jezter6]

See, what's starting to irritate me is your implication that publishers view themselves as elitist, or as part of a boy's club or something. There's no "us" and "them." If you want to put the stuff you need up on your site for your players, or produce a book that uses stuff necessary for that book, go ahead. That's what the OGL is intended for, as I see it.

What I don't want to see is people abusing generosity.

How about this?

"All you can eat, huh? Twenty-four hour buffet, huh? Well, I guess I'm never leaving."
*The patron then proceeds to take platefuls of food to the bathroom, and dumps them into the toilet, flushing them away.*

I'm sorry that it irritates you, but it is no implication. None at all. It's been discussed in meta. I've discussed it in many threads. The attitude has been provided right in this thread, although the specific person never came back to explain himself.

Your argument of the buffet is flawed, in that OGC wholesalers or free content providers are not disposing of massive amounts of your product. Sure, it may not be in the best interest of the publisher who's product is being used, but it's not a physical entity where you lose money EACH and every time the content is used. If I take and download your PDF 20 times and delete them all forever, I'm not deleting your inventory which costs money. And it's not 'gone' so that the next person in line doesn't get any because I deleted it. You're mixing apples and oranges to make a point.

At best, I'm taking your food and walking it outside and giving it to someone in line so they don't have to pay. The difference is in the contract...by going to a buffet and purchasing a meal it is a meal only for myself. OGC is the magical meal and the OGL says "go ahead, feed everyone. feed the homeless too." I'm not saying it isn't wrong (I'm also not saying it isn't right either), I'm just saying that people are trying to force outside constraints on the license, not by legal means, but by claiming that the buffet table will be cut from 20 items to 2 items if you eat more than I want you to.

 

[mearls]

Where is the raised eyebrow smily when you need it?

*chuckle*

The only things preventing a wiki that contains a variety of OGC are barriers of time and effort. Discussing it is a waste of time. Most people don't understand open source and how it is supposed to work. I suggest "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" as a good starting point. Try googling it - O'Reilly publishes a dead tree version, and I'm 90% certain there is a creative commons version floating out there somewhere.

Some people see open source as a threat, others don't. I don't, mainly because the PHB. MM, and DMG have been available online for free since 2000. An OGC repository won't make piracy any more common, nor would it make DMs any more likely to simply email PDFs to their players. I seriously doubt that a wiki could marshall a fraction of the resources needed to continually funnel new releases into its holding on anything shorter than a scope in months or even years.

The real issue, AFAICT, is whether such a repository would breed better game mechanics. That remains to be seen.

 

[jgbrowning]

Monster Geographica: I think Monster Geographica is actually a good argument for an OGC repository, and here's why. The value of MG isn't in the new content. It's in the presentation. It's the same reason WotC's Spell Compendium is popular.

Not to negate your point, but there is quite a bit of "new" material in the Monster Geographica Series. We usually update around 80-100 creatures from 3.0 rules to 3.5. This is, obviously, not the same as new monsters, but it is a process and does often result in new OGC material different than the original source.

An OGC repository isn't going to take Phil Reed's products and post them under "Phil Reed" or "Ronin Arts". It'll post the archer's greatcloak under "Equipment:Clothing", potions under "Magic Items: Potions"; and so on. It's not "reposting" "your book"; it's reposting OGC content from your book. There's a difference, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

It would depend on how it was set up. Theoretically there's no reason why a book such a Beast Builder (100% OGC) couldn't be placed up in one big download as well as an online searchable file. And the things this could happen to are the things that have provided the most OGC, ironically enough.

You guys (and I mean almost everyone) have a disconnect about "responsible use". One side says "responsible use" is reusing OGC in a manner that preserves the saleable qualities of the original product. The other says "responsible use" is reusing OGC according to the terms of the license. The problem is that one is almost completely subjective, while the other is objective.

To me responsibility is independent of law so you can use a law responsibly or irresponsibly depending upon circumstances. What we're discussing isn't the law, it's the use of the law.

joe b.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Interesting. Our books are available for free in HTML format on our site. It has, if anything, improved our sales. People are able to look and then decide if it is worth it to buy.

I could be wrong and it has cost us hundreds of units in terms of sales.

Bill

Sweet. I'm going to check that out when I have some time later. Instead of posting in this thread all afternoon I was supposed to be reading up on biotechnology...

/me runs off to get some work done!

 

[jgbrowning]

The entire book is available in HTML?

I have no idea how to explain that, then. I can't imagine buying a PDF of a book I could get for free in HTML, not when there are so many other things I want to purchase.

I believe Bill's referring to customers purchasing the dead-tree copy, but I'll let Bill chime in with the info.

joe b.

 

[Nellisir]

See, what's starting to irritate me is your implication that publishers view themselves as elitist, or as part of a boy's club or something. There's no "us" and "them." If you want to put the stuff you need up on your site for your players, or produce a book that uses stuff necessary for that book, go ahead. That's what the OGL is intended for, as I see it.

Um, that might go back to statements like this:

I don't think any of the publishers are objecting to people using the OGC they create. What we're opposed to is the idea that people might go against what we perceive is the spirit of the OGL. We think...

What I don't want to see is people abusing generosity.
How about this?
"All you can eat, huh? Twenty-four hour buffet, huh? Well, I guess I'm never leaving."
*The patron then proceeds to take platefuls of food to the bathroom, and dumps them into the toilet, flushing them away.*

It's more like *the patron then proceeds to take doggy bags of food outside and hands them out to passerbys.*, except that restaurants generally have a "you pay for one person to eat" rule, which may or may not be embedded in law. The OGL does not have that rule.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I believe Bill's referring to customers purchasing the dead-tree copy, but I'll let Bill chime in with the info.

joe b.

Ah. If so, that would make a lot more sense. I definitely prefer hard copy to electronic, for any book I'm planning to use with any frequency.

Since my publishing experience (as opposed to writing and development) is limited to PDF, however, that would also make the example irrelevent to my own angle on the discussion.

 

[jezter6]

Ah. If so, that would make a lot more sense. I definitely prefer hard copy to electronic, for any book I'm planning to use with any frequency.

Since my publishing experience (as opposed to writing and development) is limited to PDF, however, that would also make the example irrelevent to my own angle on the discussion.

Nope. It's up there. In HTML, although alot of it is yellow text on white background, so it is 'crippled' a bit.

I still think it's awesome that he does that.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Nope. It's up there. In HTML, although alot of it is yellow text on white background, so it is 'crippled' a bit.

I still think it's awesome that he does that.

No, that's not what I meant. I know it's up there in HTML format.

The question is, was he claiming that the HTML copy increased sales of PDF works, or print works?

That's the issue I may be confused about.

 

[jezter6]

Ahh, too many posts coming in too fast, I can't keep up with all the subconversations.

My bad.