PDF publishing hurts innovation, particularly for d20. Rather than use the Internet as a medium to spread concepts and test ideas, the RPG industry has instead turned it into a massive shopping center. The impulse for widespread collaboration, sharing, and improvement, precisely the sort of factors needed for an open source movement to take root and produce useful results, have been undercut by the rush to sell PDFs.
In other words, if all us pesky writers didnt want to be paid for our efforts, the d20 "movement" would go further. And PDF sellers are to blame for this.
Of course, you could also say that about Mike's print books couldn't you?
Nope, as usual, the PDF manufacturer must bear the heavy millstone of d20 system humiliation. We are the problem with the market.
Wait, don't people sell Linux? That must be different.
Update: Best. Reply. Ever.
So people are discussing this little pearl of wisdom over at the ENWorld boards, and someone posted the following comment:
PDFs are unique in their relatively low entry level - I think that's the point: Half-baked ideas straight to PDF.
Because, as every kid learns in ecnomics class, giving away half-baked ideas was the spark of innovation that made America great.
2 comments:
You're responsible for killing an hour of my life. After reading this I looked up the discussion on EnWorld, then over to Mearl's original post.
Thank you for defending capitalism.
I dont know that capitalism NEEDs defending generally.
Which was what compelled me to frame my post the way I did.
Innovation would be served if we removed the profit motive from the equation is *basically* what Mearls was saying.
I thought everyone knew there was no Marxist paradise out there lol.
The ability to get paid for what you create is behind so much law and common sense (like copywrights) that it was a little stunning to see so many people talk about innovation being served by people working for free.
How many of those posting would work for free?
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