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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rasyr" data-source="post: 2502455" data-attributes="member: 2855">See! I don't know everything! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Originally, I thought it was a good thing, a very good thing. I was even part of the group that helped to hammer out some of the bits of the OGL. But I am not so sure anymore. There is no doubt that the open source concept (and for those who don't know - the open source concept has been around for a long long time, it is not a new concept, the only new thing about the OGL was attempting to apply it to a rpg system as opposed to software (or the general scientific arts before that)) has been a fantastic thing for gamers in general. It helped to revitalize the industry when it was seriously flagging. It provided a ton of new gaming material to gamers. On the other hand, for publishers, it is more of a yes-n-no situation. It was good thing in that it tremendously lowered the entry bar, allowing many new companies to form (they did not have to spend major resources on developing their own systems), and it created an instant market for these new companies as they did not have to establish themselves with a new system - they used one that already had an extremely large following.However, on the flip side, the bar for entry into the industry was drastically lowered allowing many new companies to form. And all of these new companies were fighting for the same market share. These new companies were also producing (early on) tons of new products, all competing with one another (how many books on dragons? how many on dwarves? how many on fighter? etc..), and they were all producing their own variations on a theme. How many different sets of mechanics are needed for casting a spell? These new companies were all coming up with their own new rules, and not creating a central depository of rules, selecting only the best.One of the largest differences in open source programming (such as with linux) as compared with open source in gaming is that there is no central control. With linux, you have Linus Torvolds and a hand-picked group deciding what gets added and what doesn't. There is no such control with open source gaming. In short, it was a free-for-all. There still isn't any control to speak of, no review process for mechanics, etc.. And no, I do not consider consumers as a control in this. The OGL is closer to Sun's CDDL than it is to the GPL, I now think. Wow! I kinda rambled, huh?To recap, I think that it has been both a good thing and a bad thing - in different ways.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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