Fudge is a commercial product supported by three print publishers and a software developer, and there are several dozen Web sites supporting the game. That's more successful than 90 percent of the roleplaying games that have been produced, and more successful than any other complete RPG released under an open or semi-open license. How is it a failure?
Commercial success isn't the only measurement under which a project like Creative Commons can succeed. It also can be difficult in some cases to measure the commercial benefit of open licensing. The commercial benefit that open gaming can bring Hasbro is pretty clear, but other cost/benefit relationships aren't as simple. For example, Userland Software, the inventor of XML-RPC, didn't make any money on the protocol because the company released it under an open license. However, Userland's making money now because the widespread adoption of XML-RPC enables a lot of interaction functionality between its products and others that have adopted the standard. It's much easier to migrate to Userland's software today because of its foresight in inventing XML-RPC. The reason I like Lessig's effort, and one of the reasons I like open gaming, is that it creates a new area in which owners of intellectual property can interact with each other, encouraging the creation of new work that's of mutual benefit. Without open licensing, we're left with the status quo, where companies are filling the pockets of legislators to lock down copyrights indefinitely. -- Rogers Cadenhead, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 02/12/2002 http://www.cadenhead.org _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
