> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of The Sigil > Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 2:10 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Ogf-l] Fans and the OGL > > > >>That sounded rather elitist, but that's okay - I don't expect a lot of > >>people to be looking ahead. > > > >Forgive me, but THAT sounds elitist: claiming that you have more foresight > >than others. > > No, that sounds cocky and/or self-righteous (and in hindsight, it absolutely > did, and I apologize for my poor sentence structure). Elitist means, "we're > part of the group (in this case publishers) and you're not (so we don't need > to listen to you)." If you're going to flame me, at least get it right. > ;-)
While I accept your definitions, they don't go far enough. There are many groups that can be elitist. I mistakenly placed you in another group of elitists, those whose "superior wisdom/morality/intelligence" lets them condescend to the rest of us. Your gracious apology makes it clear that I put you in the wrong group. (For the record: I _am_ an elitist; and I believe the elite has room for everybody who wants to be elite...) > I never claimed that I had more foresight - the idea of fansites going under > the OGL was, for the record, NOT my idea, but rather the idea of one Brad > Bemis. Ryan also discussed the pros and cons of this in some of his earliest discussions of the OGL. > Fansites currently exist at the whim of WotC - you remember the TSR > "web persecution" of a few years back? WotC's policy towards current > fansites is "we'll leave you alone" - but that IS subject to change. Actually, there is NO official WotC policy as of now. The former Internet Policy disappeared from their Web site right around the time the OGL was released. Despite my frequent searches for it, I have never found it again -- particularly not at the link provided on the OGF site. Ryan said early on that he had fundamental problems with the Internet Policy, and expected it to be phased out in favor of the OGL. I don't know if this is still the WotC plan or not, but the Policy is still absent. > >There IS a distinction between publishers and fans. They have different > >needs and different perspectives. For the fan, the OGL will likely never be > >a matter of great financial risk. For the publisher, it usually is. That's > >the biggest distinction, but there are certainly others. > > Not sure I concur with you here - in theory, the fan has more to lose than a > company. While it is true that a publisher usually has more assets than a > fan and therefore more at stake in absolute terms, what happens if a > publishing company is sued and goes under? The employees are protected from > personal loss and in theory could simply start a new company with little > real damage to their own lives. A fan who is sued has no protection - his > house, car, future wages, and so forth are in real danger. To say nothing > of the fact that he is likely to crumble quickly because he can't afford > continuing exorbitant legal fees to defend himself. Of course this is a > doomsday scenario, and I don't really see any company putting the "legal > smackdown" on the fans to quite this degree but in some ways, the fan's > financial risk is FAR GREATER than the publisher's. I don't dispute any of this; but once again, we're disagreeing on definitions here. At that point, I feel the fan has crossed the line into publisher, where I _do_ think there are lots of risks, just as you describe. To my thinking, a "fan" is ONLY a player or GM who uses the material for personal use or use within his or her own gaming circle. For them, there's no financial risk in the OGL. For a publisher -- even just a fan-turned-publisher who publishes to a Web site -- there's financial risk. Martin L. Shoemaker Martin L. Shoemaker Consulting, Software Design and UML Training [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.MartinLShoemaker.com http://www.UMLBootCamp.com _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
