Mark Clover wrote:
I'm not convinvced. Shall we just leave it at that and agree it
hasn't been testing in court and won't matter until it is? We could
be at this a long time doing a dance of semantic variations and never
get anywhere.
I'd say no, because we know why that line was put in the OGL, and what
Wizards intended to do with it. If that line wasn't in there, and it
didn't mean what I know it to mean, the whole d20 trademark scheme
wouldn't work, either.
It's not a question of semantic variations -- it's a question of
following in the footsteps of the party that drafted the license.
I'm going to point out that you are, by your own admission, looking
for a compaitbility indicator and I'm going to posit that you mean
compatibility with the d20 System, a compatibility indicator to be an
alternative to the d20 system logo. I'm just going to leave it at that.
With the slight technicality that we meant "compatability with our new
documents, that may or may not have anything to do with what the d20 SRD
entails", yes.
This doesn't seem to have made much, if any, headway in the last
five/six(?) years. Is there a reason you can think of why this hasn't
been adopted by all potential adopters in that time?
Yes. It's simple, really -- there's no fiscal imperative for ANY
compatibility logo that isn't paired with a big producer. The biggest
producer already has their own logo, and the second-tiers have, for
reasons that I won't pretend to speak for, decided not to pick up
Prometheus or create their own publisher-independent logo.
If Mongoose, White Wolf, Green Ronin, or ENWorld decided to start
pushing hard for a replacement compatibility logo, that had the same
"it'll never get any worse than this" clause that the OGL, GPL, and
"PTL" all have, I think you would see Prometheus quietly fade away.
The lack of fiscal imperative also explains the other two shortcomings
-- the "PRD" itself is still rough and unfinished, and only those
relatively close to the program itself are really aware of it. There
are still today bright-eyed young gamers wondering "why isn't there a
logo that means 'I'm Open!'", and as often as not they'll try and start
their own new logo. Which just serves to divide the market, and prevent
any of these "alternative" logos (FGA's spawn inclusive) from ever
reaching meaningful penetration.
Just as an exercise, put yourself on the other side of the table and
delineate the opposite viewpoint to your usual perspective.
I think I did that above -- presuming that by "opposite" you meant "the
FGA's stuff isn't worth it", rather than "there's no point to a logo at
all."
(The argument against any logo at all basically boils down to either a
case of not-invented-here, an instance of "I don't like your
license/logo/name", or a "I don't see enough value in this to put it on
the back of my book". You might see one or two arguments of "I like the
family-focused controls on the d20 logo", but I haven't seen too many of
those.)
DM
_______________________________________________
Ogf-l mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
