A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

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

On Fri, 2004-09-17 at 15:30 -0400, Marshall Van Alstyne wrote:

> There's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma in that 
> each wants to share the other's work but not necessarily to share their 
> own.  But, the whole system benefits if each does share.

I think the Prisoner's Dillema is an excellent model of the problem.
The trick is to get enough people on the side of the "super-rational"
solution fast enough that it becomes dogma, and thus doesn't have to be
defended to each new participant as they enter the community.

> Again, very cool RL experience.  I just hope this isn't what it takes to 
> get mgmt attn.

I used the following business case when explaining the process inside
Wizards of the Coast:

1)  We believe that the more people who play D&D, the more likely it is
that D&D can acquire new players.

2)  New players buy the core rulebooks, which have the highest margin of
any product in the system.

3)  Other people using our game system will tend to both increase the
retention of existing players (by providing far more and fare more
diverse material to interest them than we could pay for ourselves), and
will thus increase the chance that a person who is interested in
learning how to play an RPG will be exposed to the phenomenon.

4)  Almost any barrier to the licensed use of our game will either
significantly impact the number of 3rd parties who would be interested
in pursuing such a license, and/or will increase our overhead to monitor
compliance with the licensing terms to the point where the effort
becomes counter productive.

5)  Thus, by allowing a free, unrestricted use of our game system we can
avoid the problems of Point #4, induce 3rd parties to engage in the
behavior outlined in Point #3, which will have the positive benefits of
Point #1, which should generate profits as described in Point #2.

This argument proved compelling.

Ryan