>And I say, "you never really had ownership of it to begin with." > >This goes into the concept of "ownership" of ideas - one of the >grossest misnomers of our time is "Intellectual Property." I >apologize in advance for the heavy dose of social theory, but here >goes... > >"Property" is something which, if I possess, nobody else can >simultaneously possess. In other words, possession of property is >exclusive. If I possess the car, you can't possess the car. (Joint >ownership is the same type of thing - if 5 people jointly possess >the car, everyone else in the world but those 5 people cannot >possess the car.) > >An idea is *NOT* property (and I cannot emphasize this strongly >enough) because it fails the possessive exclusivity test. Assume >for a moment that you have an idea. You can write it down. You can >say it. You can sit and admire how brilliant it is. You can do >whatever you want with it - it is yours. > >Now assume I come along and take your idea and leave. You can still >write it down. You can still say it. You can still sit and admire >how brilliant it is. I have in no way diminished the value of your >idea.
you somewhat address this later on, but i'm going to have to claim that, is a practical matter (rather than an ideological one) you *have*diminished the value of the idea. that's one of the curses of a market economy, where everything is only as valuable as the price someone will pay for it--it gets forests leveled, and makes ideas secret. if the first person was planning on making money by selling her idea (say, a new business-organization plan), then the fact that other s have the idea lessens its value in a market economy. now, IMHO, that is Wrong--but then i don't think we should allow absentee ownership of capital (i.e., stocks), either. >This is why it frustrates me to see publishing companies trying to >dance around the OGL and release as little USEFUL OGC as possible. >They are trying to defeat the spirit of "Open" stuff - and doing so >completely in their own self-interest - which puts them at odds with >society. As a member of society, I have the right and ethical >responsibility to call them on it and say, "you are my enemy." > >I could publish this sentence under the OGL and say that all >pronouns and prepositions are OGC. > >That would be a sentence of 17 words, of which 7 words are clearly >OGC. Wow! That's what, over 40% OGC? But is it at all useful? >No. I have complied with the letter but not the spirit. of course, that's hyperbole right now (and i hope it remains so in the future). but i understand your point. part of the problem is differenc of opinion over what constitutes "useful" OGC. frankly, i don't think *any* game-mechanical bit is "useful"--that's the *easy* part to come up with, or, for that matter, to just no thave--if i know descriptively how a monster behaves, i can run it just fine (as GM) even if i don't have a single stat for it. but if all i have is a bunch of game stats, inventing the descriptions/explanations to go with them on-the-fly is *hard*. and the other part of the problem is the (potential) conflict between open-ness and profit margin. in our market economy, where RPGs are essentially recorded ideas, there is a very real risk of destroying your profit margin by making too much open. and where that line is is anybody's guess. it might be that you could make something 100% open, with a freely-available digital copy online, and people would still buy the hardcopy product (Fudge, frex). but even then, you might very well lose more sales to the free version than you gained from try-before-you-buy and word of mouth and other gains from the free version. it might also be that just by making the crunchy bits open, with no narrative/descriptive bits, you're already significantly hurting sales (compared to if the whole thing were closed). that, and at least some of the companies making D20 products aren't going to have any interest in open-content development at all--they're in it because they've always wanted to make D&D books, or they see a cash cow, or for some other reason that makes 5% OGC simply one of the "costs" of doing business, not something they actually have any desire to do. -- woodelf <*> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.home.net/woodelph/ If any religion is right, maybe they all have to be right. Maybe God doesn't care how you say your prayers, just as long as you say them. --Sinclair _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
