A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 21 Sep 2004, at 19:48, Ryan S. Dancey wrote:

> 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.

The super-rational solution to Prisoner's Dilemma is a good example of 
"metagaming" (playing a game differently because of the knowledge that 
one is playing a game). Metagaming seems to be frowned on by as many 
businesses as by gamers when it comes to Open Source. ;-)

> I used the following business case when explaining the process inside
> Wizards of the Coast:
> [...]
> This argument proved compelling.

It's a very clear case.

Incidentally, are you familiar with the Creative Commons licenses? What 
do you think of them? Would you have considered using any of them 
rather than drafting your own license had they existed at the time? If 
not, what do you think would make them more useful for (gaming) 
business?

Thanks.

- Rob.