> woodelf > > either i'm missing your point, or you're missing mine. what i meant > to say is that you [generic you] can't complain that other ogls are > less useful *because* there's less material available via them, and > that you *therefore* won't release your material with one of them.
Of course you can, and that *is* my point. You seem to be claiming that the licenses can be evaluated independently from the material they represent. I concede that this is possible but that the product of such evaluation is far overshadowed by the value of the content they represent. I am saying that the licenses themselves are not important. At best they are ivory-tower intellectual concepts, at worst they are vehicles for the enlightened self-interest of content creators. GNU would not exist without a desire for programmers to play in the UNIX pond, and the OGL would not exist without a desire for gamers to play in the WotC pond. At no time are the licenses intrinsically valuable in and of themselves, so debating their merits cannot be particularly valuable either. Beyond certain very basic elements I don't care about the licenses, I only care about what I can do WITH them. That means they must have a significant body of work behind them before they can interest me. The situation might be different if I where an established game publisher with an established fan base and was facing the issues that WotC faced when they green-lighted the SRD. But since I'm not and it's my opinion we're talking about, I don't have to worry about it. > someone has to be the first to put useful content under a given > license, in order for there to be useful content to attract others to > use that license. in the case of the WotC OGL, of course, it > was/will be the D20SRD, giving it a huge jumpstart. No, not a jumpstart. The body of work represented by the SRD is the entire reason the OGL exists, not the other way around. It exists because fans want access to that material. In fact, they want it so badly that they are willing to create new look-alike games to compete with WotC. These look-alikes have the potential to weaken the copyright claims and the value of the IP owned by WotC, so they looked for a way to protect their interests. Open gaming was a good way to nip that in the bud (for the majority of users), and ensure that third-parties who use that material cannot complete effectively against WotC, while at the same time CAN serve the desires and needs of the d20 System gaming community as a whole. You are kidding yourself if you believe the OGL was ever about the free exchange of ideas. That part was just a lucky side-effect. > no, i mean the D20STL. currently, you have to have at least 5% OGC > content, as defined by the WotC OGL (meaning you have to place the > work under that ogl). That is technically correct but moot point. The d20STL is a brand label that indicates compatibility with other products bearing that label. If you choose to make products compatible with those brands and you DON'T use the SRD, one must ask why you bothered with the brand identification in the first place. I suppose there is some cross-marketing potential for tangential ancillary products, (d20-brand dice comes to mind) but everything that would involve an open gaming license would either involve braving uncharted legal waters (trying to create a compatible work that was not derivative) or using the SRD (and the OGL). That doesn't leave much use for commercial ventures with both the d20 logo and other open gaming licenses. Why am I stuck on commercial ventures when we're talking about open gaming? Because brand names and market identification don't really matter anywhere else. -Brad _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
