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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4042681" data-attributes="member: 1054">And who here is saying anything like that?Indeed, the open source movement relies on copyright, as does OGL. Open Source<>Public Domain. Open source specifies rules about how material can be copied and who has the right to do it, hence, copyright. It is only by copyright law that open source can be "viral", that it can mandate anyone who uses it must share their additions and modifications. The OGL is even more protective of creator rights, allowing the protection of non-derived portions of a book and only opening that which derives from previously open material. I don't see how this is socialism -- the OGL was written very heavily with the intent of protecting the commercial use of work.My "beef" with WOTC is that they stated, in August, that D&D 4e would be released under the Open Gaming License. It isn't. This has two meanings:a)They never intended for it to be, and deliberately obfuscated the point to keep competitors off-balance. ("Oh, we meant 'a' Open Gaming License. Just not the one we created, we hold the copyright to, we've always used, and which is the only one with any significant following in the game world.")b)They intended to release it under a "modified" OGL, but didn't understand their own license well enough to know that modifying it would be pointless. This is the more likely interpretation.Neither choice is very flattering, and if there's more to it than that, we'll probably never know, since we are not privy to internal corporate debate and it's doubtful anyone who IS privy would ever air any details on the matter.I spent a lot of time defending WOTC against the conspiracy theorists (First with the OGL, then with the open call for submissions which ultimately produced Eberron.[1]) when they (WOTC) were in the moral right, and now that they're in the moral wrong, I have no problem calling them on it.[1]"They just want to STEAL OUR IDEAS!" Yeah, buddy. Like your ideas -- a half page description of a world -- are remotely worth stealing. Ideas are easy; development is hard.</blockquote>

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