--- Christopher Burke wrote:
time will tell. Still, the GSL comes out months before the release of the 4th Ed. and before any 4th Ed. products can be released so there will be time to tweak it anyway. I guess we'll see in the beginning of June.
For those that don't feel like clicking the links, here's a copy/paste of the relevant bits:
"The effective start date for sales of D&D 4E GSL publications will be October 1, 2008.
The license associated SRD will be available on June 6, 2008, at no cost. A small group of publishers received advanced notice and will receive these documents prior to June 6, at no cost, in order to prepare for publication of compatible materials by the effective start date. If you haven’t already been contacted by WotC, you will be able to access the documents on the Wizards website beginning on June 6, 2008."
There's been unhappiness because with the license coming so late (and the effective start date of it), it means that 3rd party companies won't be able to have product at GenCon.
It's only a very small group of people that's had anything to do with the GSL and obviously it's not even clear to those people (like Necromancer Games) exactly what the limits and restrictions are at this point.
As for "tweaking" the license, who knows. It depends on what comes out and what people are screaming about as to whether there'll be any "tweaking" done. I think what they're mostly likely to tweak for are those people that have released games using the OGL license but in fact aren't actually d20 based games. Any publishers that have something like that _and_ want to do something related to 4E adventures are probably going to be the ones they'll tweak for.
On the whole, I think there's a lot of needless chest beating. And it's really not going to make a difference I don't think.
Back when Marvel first conceived of the Ultimates line (a remake and update of the Avengers for a modern audience) the internet went wild with it's... "dislike" ... of the idea. Marvel ignored them and published it, and it was their best selling title to date. And now looking around, there've been a few more Ultimate revisions that seem to have done fine as well. Marvel took away the lesson, "people's opinions on the internet don't matter".
WotC has learned a slightly different lesson in some ways it seems in that they do pay attention at least somewhat, but it doesn't seem to influence their decisions past a certain small point.
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