Editing Open gaming (section)

=== Open Game License ===
{{main|Open Game License}}
Despite Fudge and other games, the open gaming movement did not gain widespread recognition within the role-playing game industry until 2000, when [[Wizards of the Coast]] (WotC) published portions of the 3rd Edition of ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' as the [[System Reference Document]] under the Open Game License. This move was driven by [[Ryan Dancey]] then Brand Manager for WotC, who drafted the Open Game License and first coined the term "open gaming" with respect to role-playing games.

==== Open Gaming Foundation ====
The Open Gaming Foundation (OGF) was founded by Ryan Dancey as an independent forum for discussion of open gaming among the members of the fledgling open gaming movement. The OGF consisted of a web site and a series of mailing lists, including the ''OGF-L'' list (for general discussion of open gaming licensing issues) and the ''OGF-d20-L'' list (for discussion of d20-specific issues).

The most common criticism of the OGF was that it was primarily a venue for publicizing Wizards of the Coast. Ryan Dancey was an employee of WotC, and discussion on the mailing lists tended to focus on d20 and the OGL (both owned by WotC) rather than on open gaming in general.

The OGF maintained a definition of an "open game license" while it was active, with two criteria:

# The license must allow game rules and materials that use game rules to be freely copied, modified and distributed.
# The license must ensure that material distributed using the license cannot have those permissions restricted in the future.<ref name="licenses">{{Cite web|url=http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/licenses.html|title = Open Game Licenses}}</ref>

The Foundation explicitly stated that the first condition excludes licences that ban commercial use. The second requirement is intended to ensure that the rights granted by the licence are inalienable.<ref name="licenses"/>

==== Reaction ====
The OGL gained immediate popularity with commercial role-playing game publishers. However, the OGL was criticized (primarily by independent role-playing game developers) for being insufficiently "open", and for being controlled by the market leader Wizards of the Coast. In response to this, and in an attempt to shift support away from the OGL and toward more open licenses, several alternatives to the OGL were suggested and drafted. Similarly, the popularity of the OGL inspired others to create their own, specific open content licenses. Virtually none of these gained acceptance beyond the works of the licenses' own authors, and many have since been abandoned.