At 10:37 PM 2/11/2002, Richard Stewart wrote:
>Lizard wrote:
>
>"FUDGE and Fuzion were examples of well-designed game systems released
>under open or semi-open licenses prior to the D20 SRD. Neither can be
>called a commercial success. The D20 market exists because there's
>something worth taking out of the open pool that provides an incentive
>to put stuff in."
>
>I could not disagree more.  D20 exists to A) support a major publisher's
>product line B)give said publisher access to a great (theoretically) wealth
>of new derivative designs without having to spend resources getting them.
>WotC is NOT the great crusader for open gaming.  They are a corporation that
>NEEDS to make money.  We can see that in the D20 v3.0 L.
>
>Since D20 ONLY requires 5% OGC I can hardly see D20 as being the "open pool"
>of gaming.   You would be, or should be discussing this in the context of
>OGL rather than D20, since D20 is, in all fairness, a marketing tool to make
>money, period.

True enough. I tend to use them interchangeably, which is Bad and Wrong, as 
they are NOT the same.

Nonetheless, the main point remains -- without a major draw, nothing 
happens. In the case of Lessig's project, I don't see any motive at all for 
major rights holder to contribute; they have nothing to gain and everything 
to lose. In computer code, you can build off shared libraries; in games, 
you can reuse system mechanics, but what is "reusable" in movies? In 
novels? The only items which people would want to reuse are what the OGL 
would call "product identity". George Lucas is NOT going to let people make 
Star Wars films.

Sure, I would love to see things change -- I'd love to see copyright law 
rolled back to a sane state -- but it isn't going to happen anytime soon, 
or, indeed, anytime not-soon, and Lessig is sharp enough to know this. 
Therefore, he has some other goal in mind, and this is a diversionary or 
attention gathering (ironically enough, it could be both) tactic.

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