Brad Thompson wrote:
>
> > Lizard
> >
> > More Concern:This, and other clauses, seem to undermine the utility of
> > the OGL to smaller publishers, while enhancing it for 'big names' --
> > thus adding fuel to the "Open Gaming is Commie-Capitalist Plot!"
> > flamage.
>
> Huh?!? Commie-Capitalist? I think you don't know what that means. I sure
> don't. Is that like a conservative reactionary? ;-)
>
I'm being sarcastic. A lot of the criticism of WOTC manages to accuse
them of being money-grubbing capitalists and anti-first-amendment
communists in the same paragraph, sometimes the same sentence.
> > This is not a PERSONAL concern, since I have no commercial aspirations,
> > but from the perspective of general acceptance of the OGL, I think it's
> > important to consider. There are a lot of people circling, looking for
> > any sign that the OGL is a plot/trick/fraud/deception, and they'll leap
> > on any wording which seems to give an advantage to WOTC.
>
> You seem to be disagreeing with the heart of the Open Gaming concept. If I
> write a nifty Linux utility and publish it under my own name and the GNU
> GPL, and Red Hat also publishes it, who do you think will get better
> exposure? You can't close open material.
This is sort of my point. If I write software under GNU, and, for some
reason, I'm a 'name' (as, say, Larry Wall is) then Red Hat or SUSE or
anyone else can say, on their next release 'Now includes LizardWare
1.2.1.4.5.1.2 by ***LIZARD***' -- and use that to hype sales.
The fact is, the people who make money off open source software are the
companies which bundle it, write installers, and provide support. The
actual authors rarely get anything but credit and satisfaction in a job
well done. Linux has already made some people paper millionaires, but
Linus Torvalds earns his living working on proprietary software for
Transmeta. For that matter, O'Reilly publishing makes money selling
copyrighted documentation about uncopyrighted software, without paying
the authors of the software at all.
Along those lines, I wonder if there won't be a small gaming company
which specializes in combing web sites, newsgroups, etc, for 'k3wl'
OGLed spells, classes, races, etc, cleaning them up, adding high-quality
art and layout, and selling the results.
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