A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

["Ryan S. Dancey" <ryand AT organizedplay.com>]

On Wed, 2004-09-15 at 09:58 +0100, Rob Myers wrote:

> The parts of game products that is most Open Content-like 
> are possibly the flavor text, written descriptions and more 
> general text and illustrations. Now again this may just be 
> my perception but there doesn't seem to be much of that 
> content being marked as Open, it tends to all be marked 
> Product Identity. Is this the case, is this how you 
> expected PI to be used and if not do you think there's 
> anything the license could do about this?

My concept of the split was like a word processor and the book you write
on it.  If the code for the word processor is open, everyone can make it
work better, and positive change will create a momentum for overall
improvement.  But my book is my personal work, from which I expect to
extract value in the form of compensation.  I don't want the output of
the word processor to be open, otherwise I'll kill the value
proposition.

So in the OGL, we tried to encourage people to make the rules of the
game open content, and allowed them to limit the re-use of their
"intellectual property".

The downside, as you noted, is the tendency for publishers to try to use
PI ("Product Identity" is a defined term in the OGL that allows a
publisher to clearly identify material that is not Open Game Content) to
limit the re-use utility of their game mechanics.  The classic case is
the publisher who makes open game mechanics, then puts a PI'd name on
them.  If a 3rd party wants to re-use the mechanic, they can, but they
have to come up with a new name for that mechanic, which limits the
ability of consumers to identify the mechanic as something they've
already mastered.

There is actually less and less of this kind of behavior because the
publishers as a group are becoming more aware of the concept of shared
utility.  There's an economic incentive for them to collaborate - they
all want to use each other's work.  This is a social impetus, not a
license-driven trend, and if someone proves a business model that shows
disregarding the value of the "cathedral" makes money, it could be lost.
But so far, the trend has been in a positive direction.

> Yes, how did you convince them? ;-)

I had the advantage of total crisis.  The D&D brand was nearly dead when
I got my hands on it, and the company had spent tens of millions of
dollars to acquire it.  In such extreme circumstances, management is
often willing to cast caution to the winds on a "hail Mary" type play.
It didn't hurt that the CEO, Peter Adkison, could see the long term
value to himself personally of being able to use D&D in commercial
products regardless of his relationship to the company that owned it.
In fact, Wizards of the Coast's first product (written by Peter) was a
book that endeavored to create a unified system for many RPGs and which
was battered by real and threatened litigation as a result.

Ryan