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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8908350" data-attributes="member: 907">The fundamental problem I see is that Wizards seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the Open Gaming License. They see it as &quot;the thing that lets people make stuff for our game.&quot; That's like saying that clerics are for healing. To be sure, that is/was a large portion of what it's used for in practice, but it's not the whole picture.The OGL is a method for building a web of interconnected relationships. Wizards publishes a rule set, Malhavoc Games a book of spells, Necromancer Games a book of monsters, and I can use them all in making an adventure and then Mongoose can incorporate the magic items I made in my book in yet another thing*. The OGL 1.2 focuses exclusively on licensing the 5.1 SRD from Wizards, nothing else. There's no virality to it. That means it's no good at fostering the kind of collaborative environment the OGL 1.0(a) does.Further, many other companies have used the OGL as a means of encouraging similar structures for their own material, such as Mongoose's BRP version via Runequest and Legend, Evil Hat's FATE, or Free League's Year Zero Engine. The claim to &quot;deauthorizing&quot; the OGL 1.0(a) causes a lot of legal confusion for these materials.And that, of course, leaves aside the point of whether they can even deauthorize the OGL 1.0(a) in the first place. Signs point to &quot;no&quot;, but legal minds here have opined that it's not as clear as it sounds.The thing is that they could do pretty much everything they claim to want to do by returning to the way things were done in the early 00s, by using dual licenses. License the SRD under the OGL, and the brand under a different license. The brand license would allow people to use the creator badges, and ideally some kind of unambiguous statement of compatibility. That's where you can put requirements on actually maintaining said compatibility as well as morality clauses and whatnot.* Yeah yeah, these are either gone or not doing much with d20 these days, I don't keep up with the current 3PPs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 8908350, member: 907"] The fundamental problem I see is that Wizards seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of the Open Gaming License. They see it as "the thing that lets people make stuff for our game." That's like saying that clerics are for healing. To be sure, that is/was a large portion of what it's used for in practice, but it's not the whole picture. The OGL is a method for building a web of interconnected relationships. Wizards publishes a rule set, Malhavoc Games a book of spells, Necromancer Games a book of monsters, and I can use them all in making an adventure and then Mongoose can incorporate the magic items I made in my book in yet another thing*. The OGL 1.2 focuses exclusively on licensing the 5.1 SRD from Wizards, nothing else. There's no virality to it. That means it's no good at fostering the kind of collaborative environment the OGL 1.0(a) does. Further, many other companies have used the OGL as a means of encouraging similar structures for their own material, such as Mongoose's BRP version via Runequest and Legend, Evil Hat's FATE, or Free League's Year Zero Engine. The claim to "deauthorizing" the OGL 1.0(a) causes a lot of legal confusion for these materials. And that, of course, leaves aside the point of whether they can even deauthorize the OGL 1.0(a) in the first place. Signs point to "no", but legal minds here have opined that it's not as clear as it sounds. The thing is that they could do pretty much everything they claim to want to do by returning to the way things were done in the early 00s, by using dual licenses. License the SRD under the OGL, and the brand under a different license. The brand license would allow people to use the creator badges, and ideally some kind of unambiguous statement of compatibility. That's where you can put requirements on actually maintaining said compatibility as well as morality clauses and whatnot. * Yeah yeah, these are either gone or not doing much with d20 these days, I don't keep up with the current 3PPs. [/QUOTE]

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