I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Mercule said:Does that help to explain my somewhat conflicting feelings on the matter?
Here's what I'm getting out of it.
Mercule: WotC is just using this to stop jerk moves by 3rd parties who want to play with their toys and give nothing back.
A Lot Of Posters: That specific example wasn't a jerk move!
Mercule: Sorry, I'm irked because a lot of folks are supporting some of the real jerk moves out there.
I slightly disagree that this is to stop "jerk moves" by 3rd parties. I don't think anything any 3rd party did throughout the history of 3e really put much of a dent in WotC's core sales, in the slightest, and I think they culled a lot of great work from it (*cough*mearls*cough*). I don't think they're particularly concerned with stopping up loopholes.
What I do think is a concern is actually kind of a bigger issue. I think the suits, the lawyers, and the investors are much more concerned about the idea of IP this time around than they were last time. I think this is because the publishing industry is going through a little of what the music industry has gone through for the past 10 years: The Internet is for Free Stuff is coming to haunt them, and they're freaked out about it. The last thing they want to do is give anything away for free online. They are also very concerned, in 4e, with cementing a brand image. That's part of the reason for the breaks with old editions, why D&D is kind of evolving as a genre into its own form of fantasy (more so than it was before), and also why they don't want to give stuff away for free online. In this kind of hyper-paranoid atmosphere, they need to be concerned with two primary things with the GSL: #1: Making sure the D&D brand stays "D&D." #2: Making sure to protect that brand identity with IP that only they can use. Thus, people who make new "D&D" things can't change what "D&D" is, and they can't mess with certain IP, and they're disbarred from a host of options.
I don't think, in otherwords, that is has the slightest thing to do with some jerk moves by a limited number of 3rd party publishers. I don't think the juggernaut really cares when a few mosquitos sting it. It slaps them with its tail and moves on with life.