-Hubert-

Q. Can publishers release new products under both the OGL and 4E GSL?
A. No. Each new product will be either OGL or 4E GSL. If a new product is published under the 4e GSL, it cannot also be published as 3.x product under the OGL; and vice versa.

Not quite, at least by the terms of the GSL. To do both, you will have to make your 4th E compatible versions non-GSL.

Which, since the GSL is a revocable license, is probably the way to go anyway:
"Q) Is the GSL a perpetual license, or is it revocable by WotC for reasons other than violation?

A. The Game System License Is revocable as it is tied to the D&D trademark and other intellectual property. Because of this Wizards needs to maintain control of the license."

Still sounds like it might be best to make 3.5 products and 4.0 compatible products to avoid being bound to their 4.0 license.

-Crunchred-
I think that a tendency for threads to spawn digressions and meta-posts probably broadens the appeal of Boingboing for most people. A lot of the value of places like this is that the posts spawn conversations that bring many unrelated things together and spawn new wonderful things.

Also? I think that you are right about Cefeida, and the value of his or her critique of the local community. I think the problem lies with the accessory ideas that came with the critique.

As for the community squashing dissent? It depends on how you present your dissent. I am a relatively infrequent commenter hereabouts and I have occasionally posted things that were critical of something in the main post. In those cases, I've never been shouted down. I have been challenged to support my statements and I have had holes in my reasoning and evidence pointed out. Both of which are totally fair. I really think that it is a matter of the tone of the challenge.

-Antinous-
Glad to be of service. Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the field guide to internet trolls I got that idea from.

-Doctor Pickles-

Point of fact - the only reason you consider her "close to presenting as a troll" is because she is presenting an opinion you disagree with, not because her behavior has been poor.

Comments with the same tone defending Cory's frequent reposting about his books are not only allowed, but encouraged. Ergo the problem you have with Cefeida is the content of the posts, not the tone.

Well, it is very nice of you to tell me what my reasoning and motives are. I had no idea that was how I came to my conclusions.
Amazingly enough, I thought that my (very mild) criticism of Cefeida's wording was because his/her posts were tending toward passive aggressive undertones, not for the actual content of those posts. Thank you for setting me straight. Admittedly, to come to that conclusion, you have to read against the text of my post, something that I am generally uncomfortable with. I can see where the confusion might come in, as I gave only one example quote, but I'll take this time to point out the general strain of "more in sadness than in anger" that, at least to my eyes, underlies many of Cefeida's posts. Repeated statements that you didn't know that a community had traits x, y, or z, can be quite inflammatory. There was a fair amount of evasive and passive aggressive wording in his or her posts, and that is what I was taking objection to. There are several types of comment trolls out there, the aggressive flamer troll representing only one taxon. Another common type, especially in communities that have a low tolerance for blatant flamers, is the passive aggressive troll. I was merely pointing out that Cefeida was edging close to that particular form of trolling, and something I left out of my earlier post, that tends to undermine his or her arguments. Ergo your analysis of my post is worth a very small pile of a generic aromatic bucolic end product.

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12449.html is the one relevant to our conversation. There's still some crappyness, but it is much better than what he was talking about earlier. Glad they hammered out most of the lumps.

Ooh Clarification. I'm not saying that you are trolling, I am saying that you are coming close to presenting as a troll.

Cefeida
It is my understanding that criticism is welcome here. Boring, repetitive, trollish criticism that adds nothing to the discussion and which has been done to death in other similar threads? Disemvoweled.
You may want to watch the passive aggressive tone in your posts. You are getting awfully close to filling up a trolling bingo card with things like "And now the civilised conversation turns to mocking the dissenting minority."
PA martyr quotes are part of that slippery slope into trollishness.

Sadly, Ronin Labs is not at this time able to take credit cards. Our accounting system is currently configured to handle exchange in Gunsmith Cats Watches and bottle caps. Unfortunately our software guy is in the middle of a bender somewhere in South America. He's been gone since 1999 when our startup www.JustPlates.com crashed and burned. Still trying to figure out why that one collapsed. It was a glorious couple of weeks.

Mordion
IANAL, but the mechanics can not be copyrighted. Beyond that, a lot of terms are generic or descriptive, so they wouldn't lend the plaintiff any support in a copyright case.

Fluff and flavor text, the specific presentation of the rules, pieces that come out of a company's IP (notice the SRD genericizes all of the Bigby's and other spells)

Here's a nice rundown of the issue: http://www.godsmonsters.com/?ART=77

Oh, disclosure: I like most of Mercedes Lackey's writing; her magical talking horsies only annoy me a little. I'm talking less about her work and more about what her fans do when they create things in her work. While there are a lot of GMs out there who can tell a story with verve, skill, and originality, there are even more who run games that are like very bad fan fic. There is something awesome about role playing. It can often elevate very bad fan fic to the level of an evening's worth of great fun for the participants.

Mordion
Just as soon as I get to work on it. That means you should see TCATUMTLMP any day now. I think the field has a persistent need for more games of this type.
(If you are actually looking for a Romantic Fantasy setting, I hear that Blue Rose is supposed to be good, and since it cites Mercedes Lackey, I suspect that there are rules for telepathic companion animals that make the characters unbearable teenage lives magically better. No guarantee as I've not read the book.

Mshea, it is a specific category of content that they are restricting. You can make content in both systems, but you can't make two concurrent editions of your content.
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4171443&postcount=17
and
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4172736&postcount=44
are pretty clear on the issue.

Cefeida and others
You know what though? This being a blog and a non-static medium, repeated posts about ongoing events have intrinsic value. Especially when they add new information.

And seriously? Their self promotion posts are a tiny fraction of their total posts.

Cory
I got one of the copies that PNH was offering a bit ago, and read it rather faster than I had intended. (I'd intended to spend three days and blog my impressions each day. That held up until I woke up the morning of the second day.)
Splendid book, and I've been talking it up to anyone who I think might possibly be interested. (Actually, back when you had the highschool newspaper review copies, I got a friend of mine to request one and write it up for her school's paper. She liked it too, and hopefully some of the students there will come find it when it comes out.)

Oh gods, I screwed up. There are factual errors in the post that Cory quotes. I am sorry for my lazy wording.

It is less clear if I could publish concurrent Fudge and 4.0 editions of TCATUMTLMP.

-cory-
If the view you are talking abut is the sleaziness of the license, I agree with you 100%. But the interpretation in the post is way off base. According to the posts you reference, you will still be free to publish OGl and GSL material, just not the same material in OGL and GSL editions. If I wanted to publish a 3.5 Steampunk Espionage game called "Clockwork Spies" and a 4.0 Romantic Fantasy game called "Telepathic Comapnion Animals That Make my Unbearable Teenage Life Magically Perfect" that would be fine by the contents of that thread. If CS failed, and I decided that TCATMUTLMP was the way to go, I would not be able to release a 3.5 edition of the rules to try to get my 3.5 Steampunk fans to turn over a new leaf.

-Mshea-
There are factual errors in Cory's post. That said, according to some strong comments from the brand manager, the new license in its current manifestation is pretty sleazy.

-Jim Dandy-
But school is for learning, not for pranks.
I would stipulate that pranks are a significant part of learning, that getting up and doing something somewhat bizarre in a somewhat socially inappropriate time and place is as important as any 10 minutes of class you will ever have at any level of education. (Working on the assumption that at the higher levels you can make that ten minutes up by yourself.) The more I think about it, the more it seems that doing one harmless but strange thing that pushes you well outside of your daily behavior envelope should be a prerequisite for graduation. (Hell, learning to watch a distraction and then get back to the task at hand is also a valuable skill.) (There also needs to be a process via which a kid can opt out.) This is off the top of my head, and it would definitely need some serious fine tuning and some rules work to be viable for a public school.

I do think that raising the kids' grade in a random class is a poor choice in this case. There is encouragement and there is unearned benefits, and I really think that a boost in grade unrelated to the subject of the class is in the second category.

-SisterY-
I don't see that when you contact someone in a manner where authorship is readily identifiable and you do not have a relationship with the person you are contact that implies confidentiality (Doctor, lawyer, priest, verbal or written agreement that your conversation will be held in confidence) you have any reasonable expectation of confidentiality. If you don't want your words to be public, don't send them to people with your name attached to them.

I used to get these around Christmas time when I was a little kid. The ones we had in the States weren't as pretty as the ones pictured above, but it was really neat watching the Christmas tree crystal thing grow.