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<blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 7737296" data-attributes="member: 158">I don’t think it’s greed and control - to me it looks more like lack of time and resources to release 4e as OGL. They would have to convince management that it’s worth it for community goodwill alone (to a very small subset of the community), assign a paid person to separate all 4e rules content from product identity, assign another paid person (someone familiar with IP laws) to look it over, and then release it through the official OGL channels on their website, to support something that isn’t even their current game. The cost to benefit ratio is so small that it wouldn’t be worth it to them. It was easier for 3e and 5e because they planned to do it from the outset, so they likely had the documents prepared at the same time as their rules copy.As for PDFs, they do have a means to have the full text of the rule books (via D&amp;D beyond) - they decided to go a different way for electronic distribution. Is it my preferred way? Not at all, I refuse to buy D&amp;D beyond and have to pay a subscription to keep my content that I already own via the books, just to search easier. However, at least there’s the OGL text, so we’re not totally left out. I think from an executive perspective, D&amp;D Beyond doesn’t have the reputation stain that PDFs had from the one time they DID try to release game content through legal PDF and their own copies were digitally laundered and pirated almost immediately. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown&nbsp; &nbsp; :("&nbsp; data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Henry, post: 7737296, member: 158"] I don’t think it’s greed and control - to me it looks more like lack of time and resources to release 4e as OGL. They would have to convince management that it’s worth it for community goodwill alone (to a very small subset of the community), assign a paid person to separate all 4e rules content from product identity, assign another paid person (someone familiar with IP laws) to look it over, and then release it through the official OGL channels on their website, to support something that isn’t even their current game. The cost to benefit ratio is so small that it wouldn’t be worth it to them. It was easier for 3e and 5e because they planned to do it from the outset, so they likely had the documents prepared at the same time as their rules copy. As for PDFs, they do have a means to have the full text of the rule books (via D&D beyond) - they decided to go a different way for electronic distribution. Is it my preferred way? Not at all, I refuse to buy D&D beyond and have to pay a subscription to keep my content that I already own via the books, just to search easier. However, at least there’s the OGL text, so we’re not totally left out. I think from an executive perspective, D&D Beyond doesn’t have the reputation stain that PDFs had from the one time they DID try to release game content through legal PDF and their own copies were digitally laundered and pirated almost immediately. :( [/QUOTE]

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